Why not? Plenty of "normal" aircraft, such as most models of the Cessna 172, are fully certified for spins. It's not a particularly difficult or stressful maneuver. It was taught as part of the basic private pilot cirriculum for decades until the FAA decided to switch to "spin awareness" instead of real spins as part of a misguided attempt at safety.
Of course, now you not only know better than me, you know better than the FAA.
I'd really like to know what you've read or done which causes you to have this opinion, because it doesn't square with reality at all.
Mostly documentation about spin recovery no longer being done as part of the PPL for safety reasons. Exactly what you've dismissed above.
We were talking about visibility problems caused by the nose of the airplane, remember? You don't get hazy, foggy, or partially transparent aircraft noses. All this business about weather is totally off the subject and you're once again distorting my words.
We were talking about visibility. Your words were that you either can see something or you can't. You didn't qualify it in any way. Perhaps you had limited the discussion in order to exaggerate and attack what I was saying. I had not. I certainly didn't distort your words. You're the one adding words like 'completely' when I said that the nose could limit visibility. You didn't even bother trying to understand what I was saying. You were too busy attacking what you thought I'd said.
"Obstacles"? As in fixed objects that sit on the ground? If you're constantly on the lookout for those while flying at altitude then you're just silly. A constant lookout for other traffic is of course necessary, and if you're flying nap-of-the-earth then watching for radio towers and such is e very good idea, but a distraction of a few seconds is extremely unlikely to make any difference on this.
That seems to be how you operate. Reductio ad absurdum. Is it too hard to actually counter what I'm saying instead of purposefully misinterpretting and then trying to make me sound ridiculous.
Now you're making your argument for me. Distractions are part of the environment and you should learn to deal with them instead of completely eliminating them.
Thanks for the lesson. Now in the middle of this, close your eyes for three seconds. What happens? Approximately nothing. Now do the same thing on the highway. Decent odds you'll come out of it with at least a wrecked vehicle.
Is that why I've seen my cabbies holding a clipboard and flipping through it -not that I'm happy about it, but they've gone through a list of things or written down phone numbers while talking on the mobile or cab radio and while doing 100km/hr down the freeway. All without hitting a damn thing.
Whether you're in a car or a plane it depends entirely on the conditions at the time. Of course closing your eyes for 3 seconds with the autopilot on won't kill you in a plane at 6000ft with no traffic about. Try doing it on short final and you'll become a statistic. Same with driving on a freeway. Open road, little traffic, not as safe as at altitude but it can be done. If you're doing it for kicks or in peak hour you're an idiot. Close your eyes in dense traffic over an airport and likewise I'd call you an idiot, even with the greater separation.
Talking to ATC is very different from talking on the phone, though. It tends to be pretty intermittent, with single roundtrips interspersed with lots of downtime. It's very unemotional, which makes it much less distracting. It's also fully expected that a pilot will completely ignore ATC at any time that something more urgent is required.
Yes, it's called being trained to deal with distractions and prioritise what's important.
In my experience drivers aren't trained on distractions at all. Maybe things are different where you are.
You KNOW I meant AREN'T rather than ARE. That's been my whole fucking point all along. TRAIN drivers to deal with distractions while driving. Don't try to eliminate them all, and don't come up with stupid rules that drivers will ignore anyway.
So what? I'm sure advanced driving courses teach steering. That doesn't mean that it's an advanced or difficult maneuver.
It certainly implies it's more intricate an area than could be dismissed as being simple. Advanced steering is about difficult conditions - snow/ice, loose surface, extreme speed, aqua-planing etc. I wouldn't want to take my car into such conditions on purpose without having had such training. I wouldn't want to be using the wrong kind of vehicle either. Likewise I wouldn't want to be doing spins in a non-aerobatic aircraft. A simple stall might be easy to recover in most docile civilian aircraft - again I didn't deny that - however you have to have some respect for it and you don't stall intentionally or dismiss it as some kind of simple or trivial maneuver. I wouldn't be stalling the aircraft just for kicks or treating an unintentional stall as no big deal.
distinctly remember you talking about a C172, landing at 46MPH, and saying that this was somehow comparable to driving on the highway at 65MPH. I distinctly remember discussing how 65MPH gives you twice the kinetic energy and stopping distance, which doesn't make it remotely comparable.
We weren't talking about kinetic energy, and don't even mess with me when it comes to physics because in that area I guarantee you I know more (but I won't throw my qualification in your face). E=(mv^2)/2 46^2 = 2116. 65^2=4225 so yes that's almost exactly double the KE. Stopping distance isn't just a factor of KE at your speed. It depends on reaction time and braking capability. Saying you have double the stopping distance at double the KE is just plain wrong. If I recall correctly we were talking about the ease with which to manage staying in you lane vs landing on a runway in a crosswind. We weren't talking about stopping distance or KE. You're once again muddying the issue.
Either you can see where you're going or you can't. There's not really any room for partial obscuration.
Now this is one of the stupidest things a pilot could possibly say!!! There's an entire terminology for describing meteorological conditions and visibility. Ever heard of VFR vs IFR? There are rules as to how much visibility you need to have before you're allowed to fly VFR.
Then why did you bring it up? My entire thesis revolves around the idea that flying is slower and more cerebral than driving. If terrain avoidance is a slow game of strategy rather than a rapid-fire tactical game like you find driving on a highway, then this only supports my point
Flying requires constant attention. The fact that you're less likely to hit anything at any given moment and that it can become boring makes it all the more potentially deadly. If you're not on constant lookout for obstacles, you're not a good pilot. If you're "playing a rapid-fire tactical game" on the highway you're not a good driver - slow down and or leave a bit more of a gap between yourself and others - drive defensively and stay away from lunatics so you're not having to react in a split second. When things do happen more quickly in an aircraft the fact that you're traveling faster means they happen a hell of a lot more quickly.
In other words flying only appears to be more cerebral. In reality if you're not watching out you can be in trouble before you even know you are. You've only got 360 degrees to worry about as a driver, and you have good vision in every direction a threat can come from (with possible exception of your blind spot which is why extra care must be taken to check it). You have 360 by 360 in an aircraft and you don't have good visibility of it all, which is one reason we have ATC, radar, and a pile of rules about separation. Even then mid-airs have happened where pilots didn't know what hit them.
You're the one who twisted my words to "show" that I'm equivalent to some guy whose poor judgement got a bunch of his passengers killed. That's a grave insult and I don't take kindly to that kind of thing. It pisses me off when pe
I've come to the conclusion that you're not a pilot, you're a horses arse.
I said: Why then do they teach stall recovery and unusual attitudes in a specialized aerobatic course?
You countered with paragraphs about how they teach stall recovery as part of the PPL training. I never said that basic stall recovery wasn't taught as part of the PPL you jackass. You state that I said this though I never did. I said that stall recovery and unusual attitudes were taught in a specialized course. You know perfectly well that there are such specialized courses, and that they go way beyond PPL theory or prac takes you.
Lets see what I actually said vs what you say I said:
- Stall recovery is only taught in specialized aerobatic courses - Unusual attitude recovery is only taught in specialized aerobatic courses
No I said stall recovery and unsual attitudes is taught in specialized aerobatic courses. This is true. Those courses go much further than PPL training.
- Light aircraft land at the same speed as the maximum speed limit on a typical highway
I distinctly remember using the word comparable, and this is true for the most common aircraft. It is more usual for an aircraft to land around 60KIAS than it is around 30KIAS, yet you insist on bringing the less common aircraft into it.
- Typical takeoff angle of attack causes the nose of the aircraft to completely obscure the flight path
No I said that it can obstruct the aircraft's flight path and this is true. I made no mention of the word 'completely'.
- Avoiding terrain, avoiding restricted airspace, and maintaining altitude requires constant, twitchy attention similar to avoiding maniac drivers on a highway
No, that's your own little straw man you're creating. I said no such thing. What I did say is that there is terrain to clear and that your implying that there's nothing to avoid most of the time while flying is not true.
Then you have the gaul to lecture me about reading a comprehension and mock me about not being up to it. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I'm not wasting my time arguing with an arrogant idiot who thinks twisting other people's words and shooting down straw men amounts to proving them wrong. Go fly a kite.
If the very basic statement that I'm wrong about is that driving requires more raw physical reaction and short-term attention than flying, well I'm sorry but it's simply true. If you still don't believe me, maybe you'll remember this famous quote:
Maybe the way you fucking fly. You're suppose to be maintaining a scan of your primary instruments and you're suppose to be watching out for other traffic. If you don't do that, that makes you a lousy pilot because problems can occur at any time, not just on takeoff and landing.
"Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror." -- Pappy Boyington
No, flying with you would be sheer terror all the way because your attitude stinks.
I never said that you're not qualified to comment on flight because you're not a pilot. The reason you're not qualified to comment is because you don't know what you're talking about.
What a bunch of bullshit. Do I need to quote back your repeated challenges to me to produce my qualifications? You may or may not be a pilot but you've established you're a dishonest troll that goes back on what you've said.
Right now you can take a hot air baloon ride. If you're looking to do any pro aerial photography, you might still want a Gyro stabilized camera mount of some sort. They're expensive equipment but I hear you can rent them. On the other hand if you're an amateur the baloon ride is going to set you back enough bucks. Take a camera with built in image stabilization and it should be good enough.
And if you stall it because your engine died on takeoff then you are incompetent, plain and simple. First thing they drill into your head for these things: airspeed, airspeed, airspeed. Keep your speed up. Push that nose down. Keep flying the airplane. An engine failure on takeoff will not cause a low-altitude stall unless you are truly asleep at the wheel.
Ah yes because we're only talking about competent pilots that never make mistakes here.
And if you stall that 172 you will first have a very loud warning buzzer in your ear, then it will shudder and shake, and then it will stall. And even at this point, a power-on stall properly attended to will not result in much, if any, loss of altitude prior to recovery. This does not take exceptional skill either. It takes no more skill or fast reaction than pushing on your brakes when you see the car ahead of you push on his brakes.
Why then do they teach stall recovery and unusual attitudes in a specialized aerobatic course?
So you know some facts about flying, but you don't know about flying. Do you know what it feels like when you accidentally stall an airplane? Have you recovered one after losing a minimum amount of altitude? No, you have not. You may be full of the facts but you don't have the experience to interpret them.
I prove you wrong on some very basic statements you made - these are things that any good pilot should not get wrong, and you come back to "I'm a pilot. I have experience. I know best.". Well, it baffles me that an experienced pilot would insist that flying an aircraft does not require more care and skill than driving a car.
I'm not going to prove I'm a pilot simply because I choose to be anonymous here and I can't think of a good way to prove it without destroying that. But if you can think of something, I'll be happy to oblige.
That might be true but it's also very convenient. I know qualified pilots who I'd never fly with. I also know qualified pilots that I'd trust with my life.
Again, you know the facts but you don't have the experience. Your angle of attack ("alpha") is going to be 10-20 degrees at takeoff. Most airfoils stall at around 18 degrees, so it's necessarily going to be less than that angle. In most planes the nose does not stick out so far as to block your vision 18 degrees down, so you can still see where you're going. The only time this isn't true is when flying certain taildraggers where they sit so far back while on the ground that the nose blocks forward vision. But as they take off, they raise the tail and the pilot can see where he's going.
Anything occuring just below your line of sight is a danger, as is evident in most pilot training manuals I've come across. If it was easy to cite one I'd show you, but the only one I know of online is the pilot operating handbook made available by the FAA, and I'm not going to spend my time going through it to find a picture that may or may not be included in that particular book.
By the way what type aircraft are you checked out on? If I'm not qualified to comment on flight because I have some knowledge but am not a pilot, why are you qualified to present information on "most planes". Do you regularly fly commercial aircraft too? Have you forgotten that aircraft fly and even land in near zero visibility weather? THIS is the kind of blatant oversight that makes me wonder if you're really a pilot.
Unfortunately I have to get back to work now, but I will rebut one last thing:
That said, if I were going to give a child total control over a machine for sixty seconds, I'd rather do it in an airplane at a nice altitude than in a car at highway speeds. There's not much he'll be able to do in sixty seconds to kill us, whereas I'd count myself lucky to survive after the highway.
Well similar poor judgment and overconfidence to yours has cost lives:
All household users have been told to *never* use this account and why.
Congrats. You've just given all household users a way to create a headache for you by wiping your computer. Even if they don't do it intentionally, they may do it out of curiosity.
Also, logging on to this account invokes a 'Nuke' scrip that will DBAN type wipe the system if I don't deactivate it within 7 days
I hope your account has a script for checking that it hasn't been activated by mistake.
If you're really a pilot you should know much better.
A stall at a few thousand feet is trivial to deal with.
A stall at several thousand feet is not the problem. Most unintentional stalls don't happen at altitude, or there would be a lot less danger. When's the most likely time an engine will cut out on you? Just after takeoff.
First, airspeed control is easy. Most planes cruise at twice their stall speed or more. It's very difficult to inadvertently let your speed drop by that far.
In level flight they cruise at twice their stall speed. Most of the more common passenger aircraft which aren't turbo-charged have Vx (maximum climb) not much greater than Vs1 (stall speed in non-landing config). In a Cessna 172 Vs1 is around 48 KIAS and Vx is just over 60KIAS
Funny, I could say the same thing about you. Between the two of us, I have an FAA issued pilot certificate as well as a US state government driver's license. How about you?
Stating you have a license and proving you have one are very different matters. I could lie and state that I'm an airline pilot, and you wouldn't know the difference.
I have no idea what this is supposed to refer to. By the time you raise the nose, you've had plenty of time to look down the runway. Once you raise the nose, you start to fly. At no point are you blind to your direction of travel.
You say you're a pilot yet your reasoning implies you think the direction you point the nose is where the aircraft is going to be in a few seconds. Your plane doesn't do that and you should know it. You're going to be travellng at some alpha on takeoff and that will continue as you climb out.
I've done this many times. I've landed unpowered aircraft in winds gusting to 25 knots. It definitely takes some work, but this phase only lasts a couple of minutes. Compare this to driving a car, where a twitch of your steering wheel can mean instant death at nearly any time.
Those couple of minutes are deadly if you don't get it right. Unless you're only ever driving your car at 120km between concrete barriers I don't know how you can say twitching your wheel can mean instant death at nearly any time. What's more if you're traveling in a car you can slow or stop the car at any time, and there are usually lots of places to pull over. In a plane you can't slow down or stop. If your engine dies you're in trouble and have to glide, and airports are separated by considerable distances. Consider also how much practice you've had to be able to land in 25knot wind. By contrast how long did it take you to learn to pull over in your car!
Generally you'll either have ample time to react to a collision threat or you'll have insufficient time. A threat which is recognized in time for you to react but which gives you only seconds to execute the proper maneuver is exceedingly rare. Compare this to driving, where it happens constantly.
The first sentence above is so obvious as to be almost meaningless. You either have time to react or you don't. Brilliant deduction. The second isn't true - how often do you land in dead calm wind? Any time you're flying relatively low there is terrain to avoid. You also may not be in danger of collision but straying outside of designated airspace, or off your designated altitude when flying IFR leads to plenty of collision dangers. The third is true - there are constant collision dangers driving a car. However you can slow down to any speed or pull over at any time which you can't do in a plane.
Funny, I could say the same thing about you. Between the two of us, I have an FAA issued pilot certificate as well as a US state government driver's license. How about you?
I don't have a license - I've studied a lot of the literature and spend time on simulators but there are several reasons I won't be going
There's a major difference between flying a plane and driving a car: a fast moving car is always one or two seconds away from utter disaster, whereas a plane nearly always gives its pilot much more time to react.
If you're suggesting that flying an aircraft is easier than driving a car, you know nothing about flying. Stall your plane and unless you're a few thousand feet high, good luck with that time to react theory.
Think about driving on the highway. You're driving along at 75MPH at a minimal safe distance from the guy in front of you. He slams on his brakes. You have at best perhaps three or four seconds to slam on yours, and that's assuming that your minimal safe distance is larger than is typical and that your braking system is at least as powerful as his. There are many other situations when driving a car where you only have a second or two to react. A small twitch of the steering wheel can send your car straight into a concrete pillar.
Think about flying a plane. You're traveling much faster. If you allow your airspeed to stall, your plane falls out of the sky. Often you have to be careful if you want to have visibility in the direction you're travelling. Think about raising the nose during takeoff. If you think that staying in your lane is hard, try lining up a plane with the runway and a crosswind blowing. If you're worried about collisions consider that unless you're doing exactly the right thing and both you and the flight controller are on the ball you won't have 4 seconds to react since the plane that hits you will have done so before you know what hit you.
Flying, on the other hand, is much slower and more cerebral. There are very few events which require immediate reactions.
It is very VERY clear you don't know what you're talking about. The slowest plane on landing is about as fast as a car is allowed to travel on a highway. I seriously suggest you have some idea what you're talking about before writing paragraphs and paragraphs about it.
Regarding your first point: X-Plane is an advanced commercial flight simulator package available for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It should compare favorably with MS Flight Simulator.
I've used the X-Plane demo. X-Plane isn't fantastic when it comes to graphics, multi-player environments and having a wide selection of addons. it doesn't model flight computers as well and is generally far behind. It's no substitute for MSFS, which is a shame because Microsoft has taken a great product in FS2004 and screwed the pooch with FSX in so many ways.
X-Plane does do it's airflow modelling differently. Where MSFS uses a table based approach, X-Plane models airflow and the way the air hits the wing. This modelling is crude but it's suppose to be closer to reality for out of control flight and allows you to experiment with wing designs if you've got the time and patience. So it's not garbage software or useless, but it's no substitute for MSFS.
You have some good points, but if you're wanting it to vacuum while you watch a movie you must have a really big house or a really quiet vacuum cleaner.
Because Joe wants to run Calendar Creator or some such nonsense
This dismissive attitude is one major reason that Linux isn't further along taking over the desktop.
Name me a good Linux alternative to the following software:
1) Microsoft flight simulator 2004 or FSX No Flightgear doesn't even come close to cutting it. It's years behind.
2) Chessmaster X or XI or even Fritz Don't start with GNUChess or XBoard, which only do very basic chess, don't have any coaching
3) Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Yes it's a game. It's also a simulator of sorts. However name me a 3D environment in which I can design a running theme park.
4) Realflight G3 or G4 I'm not even aware of a remote control flight simulation package on Linux. Practice here stops me crashing planes which means I get to spend less time and money building and more time flying them.
So far it's games and entertainment, but they're important to me. Let's get broader
5) Photoshop Yes I know it's a typical complaint but Gimp really doesn't do everything I want to do and really is more awkward to use. I'm still trying to use GIMP where practical since I hate Vista with a passion and XP is being killed off. I'd like to get some familiarity with an environment i may be forced onto in a year or two.
6) Omnipage pro Solutions that only OCR single column text are useless to me. I got Omnipage SE "for free" when I bought a printer, Okay so I paid for it but I didn't have an option to get the printer without it since it came bundled. Anyway the OCR solutions aren't near as feature complete.
7) IE only websites. I'm willing to admit that when it comes to web browsers and Office software, Linux isn't far behind. However if I'm doing my banking with someone whose only catering to IE am I suppose to drop every other consideration and move to a different bank at great expense just so I can go to Linux? Or do I have to use VMWare? Be reasonable.
I don't understand why there are four switches. I mean, I understand "Arm" and "Destruct", but why "test"? Does that blow up just a small section of the shuttle?
That button is for mission controllers that wanted to be astronauts but didn't make the cut. It blows up just one astronaut, but leaves the shuttle flying. Correct procedure when using this button is to laugh maniacally then yell "Who wants to be an astronaut now, bitch!" before flicking the switch.
If you're going to drive while distracted you need to be trained to deal with it.
Pilots manage a vehicle in 3 dimensions, with no marked paths or lanes. Their aircraft will fall out of the sky if speed is not managed. At the same time they need to make constant radio calls to inform tower, controller or circuit traffic of their position, and follow instructions or rules on where they should be. The difference is that they are trained to manage all the tasks much more thoroughly than drivers are. They're not taught to occassionally glance at their instruments the way a driver is. They're taught to scan them constantly. They're not taught nothing about how to communicate with the tower - they're taught to aviate, navigate and communicate prioritizing in that order.
What we need is to train drivers to handle the distraction. Want to see if the distraction is going to make them worse. Well first give them some experience dealing with the distraction and give them some guidelines on how to deal with it so they can practice. Only then should they be tested on how safe they are.
This idea that we can somehow eliminate all distractions and make driving safer and that we should all feel guilty otherwise is nonsense. In the real world, distractions will happen. Kids will fight in the back seat. (correctly dealt with by either pulling over or ignoring them). The radio, conversations, and books on tape are distractions that we need to teach drivers to deal with (it should be part of the practical driving exam). Other distractions are unacceptablet because they take full concentration and should be banned. Anything that takes your eyes off the road for more than a second would fall under this category. So changing a radio station should still be permitted but watching a dvd or texting should not.
The trouble is in this risk adverse society common sense has been thrown out the window and has been replace with scaremongering and guilt. Moronic!
So you don't mind if your ISP blocks your access to websites they don't like, or drop emails they disagree with?
Error: Bad analogy detected. Detail: You pay your ISP to provide you with a service, that service being access to the Internet. In contrast you don't pay other freenet users (unless you choose to consider the bandwidth you allocate as payment)
In a few more years, I can really see apartments or dorm rooms with no stereo, no "computer," no TV, etc. You have one device, positioned so its charging booth is a good location for the projected screen. When it is not in use, it will roam the home vacuuming and taking the occasional picture for security.
Terrible idea. Not just trolling, I can see lots of problems:
1. Robot breaks, your household goes to shit because it did everything. 2. One device is still one device. What happens if you want your robot to vacuum while you watch a movie? 3. Privacy. Security footage while vaccuming? Can see it now - it catches you on the loo or your wife in the shower then accidentally shows it to your friends on the big screen. 4. Security. All that information in one place. When you'll be home, or what you're likely to be doing.
Separate dedicated devices are just fantastic. If you're going to diversify a device it has to do multiple similar things that can't happen at the same time. Eg. Plays music as well as video is a good idea. Plays music while being a security device is a gimmick.
The biggest problem with open source that most people have with it is user friendliness
Perhaps. However personally, I have no interest in how user friendly it is, just in how difficult and time consuming it is to get something done. I'm willing to learn so for me, missing, buggy or undocumented features are the bane of my existence with F/OSS. Roughly in that order. Granted I'd be described as a power user, developer, and hobbyist. Granted people aren't all as willing to learn the name and function of dozens of command line utilities. However zero dollar price is a big enough incentive to get past all that. That said what do you suggest an end user do when a feature is missing, or there's a bug no one is willing to fix?
An iPod does not require using iTunes. You can put Rockbox on an iPod and simply drag the music files directly onto the iPod mounted as a drive. There's also plenty of other programs that can read and write to an iTunes database.
Mod -1:Misleading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbox Work on Rockbox for the iPod Nano (second and third gen), iPod Touch, and the iPod Classic has not begun due to firmware encryption that Apple places on all new iPods.
As much as I value and love my privacy, I'd want someone to investigate if I went missing without a trace. Now once I'd been found if I said I didn't want to reveal my whereabouts I'd hope that was respected.
The only issue I see here is the potential for abuse. A police officer could lie to get the records and wouldn't be questioned about it. What if that police officer is corrupt? Sounds like a good way to find someone who was trying to dob them in and silence them. I bet other slashdotters can think of plenty of other hypotheticals for abuse.
The Olympics may once have been about international co-operation and peace, but the cynic in me doubts it. Regardless, today what it's about is is making money by getting people to rally around their sports stars and using IP law in every possible way to screw every possible cent out of every last person the IOC can get crazed enough to spend up big. Gold and doing your best and achieving to the limit my left nut! Gold digging more like. The athletes are often within fractions of a second of each other, achieving just about to the limit of human endurance (or at the very least within about 5% of it). The actions, rules and behaviour of the IOC clearly shows they're interested in money and not in any noble or virtuous cause!
I think I can argue that I was seeing the intended meaning. Can you actually picture a headline of "Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Best Friend"? "Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Boyfriend"?
Yeah, actually I can. I could see him saying "non-techy best friend" but that's because geeks tend to have friends that are also geeks. Geeks also tend to have girlfriends that aren't geeks because a) techy girlfriends are in fact in short supply and b) geeks are often attracted to someone that doesn't talk code all day.
See, I think it's the fact that they emphasized that she was someone's girlfriend and didn't feel they needed to put any information about level of computer literacy in the headline
See above. This just reflects the fact that the majority of geeks would be in relationships with non-geeks and that IT is male dominated. You might want to ask why it's male dominated. The only IT company that I ever worked for that was female dominated (my first serious IT job) had more competent females and a 50:50 ratio of male:female. Women are good at coding when they're interested and want to be in it. However most women I've even tried to cultivate an interest in computers in just couldn't care less. To them computers are uninteresting. Now I don't know how much of this is programmed by society and how much of the interest is hardwired from birth but either way the reality is MOST geeks have girlfriends that aren't computer enthusiasts or professionals. THAT is why it's easy to deduce the guy meant non-techy. It's not because he's a sexist pig that wants to imply that all women are stupid. Making out that this is the case, and hiding from the reality that IT is male dominated is just plain bone headed and does not achieve any kind of social equality for women.
And, like a lot of things, the problem can probably be put more on societal attitudes, which I freely admit have improved quite a bit even in my lifetime.
Nothing to do with social attitudes. Every IT place I've worked at has absolutely welcomed women into the group, but trying to find interested, passionate, motivated and qualified candidates is very hard. How much does that have to do with social attitudes turning women off computing? I don't know. What I do know is that it's very very rare to see a woman get excited about writing code. When you do though they're no less competent than the blokes.
Honestly who wants to work with a bunch of smelly blokes and no women if given the choice? I know there are guys out there but I ain't one of them. I'm also married, I don't cheat and I'm not a big flirt, so I'm not saying that because I'd like to hook up. Women just add variety and can be more pleasant and social at times. That is the ones that aren't intent on being nasty piece of work...but there are plenty of blokes who are nasty pieces of work.
Equality is about just that. Equality. Opportunity does not mean entitlement. You still have to work for it. When we see women filling computer classes and showing as much interest as men, we'll see more of a sea change in attitudes and it will become necessary to qualify the subject of an article like this one.
I was thinking hey neat till I read this in the article.
For one thing, the light comes to a focus far away from the foil sheet - with distances measured in kilometres, which means the camera and other instruments have to be mounted on a separate spacecraft. The instrument spacecraft would have to stay precisely aligned with the foil sheet, to within a millimetre or so.
Certainly not impossible, and still exciting, but this isn't going to be a mainstream or amateur tool any time soon.
Looks like there also may be a related patent to get past...
I'm not saying certain people should be off limits for such projects. Just that the headline emphasized the assumption that some geek's girlfriend must be computer illiterate, that's it.
Only if you take it that way, in which case you're the one being sexist. He may have implied she's no Linux enthusiast, but he could have implied that about his best friend. Why is it suddenly derogatory to imply that about his girlfriend?
A sexist headline would have read: "Even my ditzy idiot girlfriend can use Ubuntu"
Even THAT doesn't imply all women (or all girlfriends) are ditzy and idiots.
Lets try: "Even a chick can use Ubuntu"
Now if he'd done something closer to that, I might agree.
I agree that girlfriend isn't a full time occupation. I don't agree that he was being insulting towards women. I mean the guy had his girlfriend photoshop her face on his body. He's not beyond a little self-ridicule. He also went to great pains to point out she was intelligent and up to the challenge, just not an IT professional or hobbyist.
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Why not? Plenty of "normal" aircraft, such as most models of the Cessna 172, are fully certified for spins. It's not a particularly difficult or stressful maneuver. It was taught as part of the basic private pilot cirriculum for decades until the FAA decided to switch to "spin awareness" instead of real spins as part of a misguided attempt at safety.
Of course, now you not only know better than me, you know better than the FAA.
I'd really like to know what you've read or done which causes you to have this opinion, because it doesn't square with reality at all.
Mostly documentation about spin recovery no longer being done as part of the PPL for safety reasons. Exactly what you've dismissed above.
We were talking about visibility problems caused by the nose of the airplane, remember? You don't get hazy, foggy, or partially transparent aircraft noses. All this business about weather is totally off the subject and you're once again distorting my words.
We were talking about visibility. Your words were that you either can see something or you can't. You didn't qualify it in any way. Perhaps you had limited the discussion in order to exaggerate and attack what I was saying. I had not. I certainly didn't distort your words. You're the one adding words like 'completely' when I said that the nose could limit visibility. You didn't even bother trying to understand what I was saying. You were too busy attacking what you thought I'd said.
"Obstacles"? As in fixed objects that sit on the ground? If you're constantly on the lookout for those while flying at altitude then you're just silly. A constant lookout for other traffic is of course necessary, and if you're flying nap-of-the-earth then watching for radio towers and such is e very good idea, but a distraction of a few seconds is extremely unlikely to make any difference on this.
That seems to be how you operate. Reductio ad absurdum. Is it too hard to actually counter what I'm saying instead of purposefully misinterpretting and then trying to make me sound ridiculous.
Now you're making your argument for me. Distractions are part of the environment and you should learn to deal with them instead of completely eliminating them.
Thanks for the lesson. Now in the middle of this, close your eyes for three seconds. What happens? Approximately nothing. Now do the same thing on the highway. Decent odds you'll come out of it with at least a wrecked vehicle.
Is that why I've seen my cabbies holding a clipboard and flipping through it -not that I'm happy about it, but they've gone through a list of things or written down phone numbers while talking on the mobile or cab radio and while doing 100km/hr down the freeway. All without hitting a damn thing.
Whether you're in a car or a plane it depends entirely on the conditions at the time. Of course closing your eyes for 3 seconds with the autopilot on won't kill you in a plane at 6000ft with no traffic about. Try doing it on short final and you'll become a statistic. Same with driving on a freeway. Open road, little traffic, not as safe as at altitude but it can be done. If you're doing it for kicks or in peak hour you're an idiot. Close your eyes in dense traffic over an airport and likewise I'd call you an idiot, even with the greater separation.
Talking to ATC is very different from talking on the phone, though. It tends to be pretty intermittent, with single roundtrips interspersed with lots of downtime. It's very unemotional, which makes it much less distracting. It's also fully expected that a pilot will completely ignore ATC at any time that something more urgent is required.
Yes, it's called being trained to deal with distractions and prioritise what's important.
In my experience drivers aren't trained on distractions at all. Maybe things are different where you are.
You KNOW I meant AREN'T rather than ARE. That's been my whole fucking point all along. TRAIN drivers to deal with distractions while driving. Don't try to eliminate them all, and don't come up with stupid rules that drivers will ignore anyway.
You're just being a fucking troll.
Good day.
So what? I'm sure advanced driving courses teach steering. That doesn't mean that it's an advanced or difficult maneuver.
It certainly implies it's more intricate an area than could be dismissed as being simple. Advanced steering is about difficult conditions - snow/ice, loose surface, extreme speed, aqua-planing etc. I wouldn't want to take my car into such conditions on purpose without having had such training. I wouldn't want to be using the wrong kind of vehicle either. Likewise I wouldn't want to be doing spins in a non-aerobatic aircraft. A simple stall might be easy to recover in most docile civilian aircraft - again I didn't deny that - however you have to have some respect for it and you don't stall intentionally or dismiss it as some kind of simple or trivial maneuver. I wouldn't be stalling the aircraft just for kicks or treating an unintentional stall as no big deal.
distinctly remember you talking about a C172, landing at 46MPH, and saying that this was somehow comparable to driving on the highway at 65MPH. I distinctly remember discussing how 65MPH gives you twice the kinetic energy and stopping distance, which doesn't make it remotely comparable.
We weren't talking about kinetic energy, and don't even mess with me when it comes to physics because in that area I guarantee you I know more (but I won't throw my qualification in your face). E=(mv^2)/2 46^2 = 2116. 65^2=4225 so yes that's almost exactly double the KE. Stopping distance isn't just a factor of KE at your speed. It depends on reaction time and braking capability. Saying you have double the stopping distance at double the KE is just plain wrong. If I recall correctly we were talking about the ease with which to manage staying in you lane vs landing on a runway in a crosswind. We weren't talking about stopping distance or KE. You're once again muddying the issue.
Either you can see where you're going or you can't. There's not really any room for partial obscuration.
Now this is one of the stupidest things a pilot could possibly say!!! There's an entire terminology for describing meteorological conditions and visibility. Ever heard of VFR vs IFR? There are rules as to how much visibility you need to have before you're allowed to fly VFR.
Then why did you bring it up? My entire thesis revolves around the idea that flying is slower and more cerebral than driving. If terrain avoidance is a slow game of strategy rather than a rapid-fire tactical game like you find driving on a highway, then this only supports my point
Flying requires constant attention. The fact that you're less likely to hit anything at any given moment and that it can become boring makes it all the more potentially deadly. If you're not on constant lookout for obstacles, you're not a good pilot. If you're "playing a rapid-fire tactical game" on the highway you're not a good driver - slow down and or leave a bit more of a gap between yourself and others - drive defensively and stay away from lunatics so you're not having to react in a split second. When things do happen more quickly in an aircraft the fact that you're traveling faster means they happen a hell of a lot more quickly.
In other words flying only appears to be more cerebral. In reality if you're not watching out you can be in trouble before you even know you are. You've only got 360 degrees to worry about as a driver, and you have good vision in every direction a threat can come from (with possible exception of your blind spot which is why extra care must be taken to check it). You have 360 by 360 in an aircraft and you don't have good visibility of it all, which is one reason we have ATC, radar, and a pile of rules about separation. Even then mid-airs have happened where pilots didn't know what hit them.
You're the one who twisted my words to "show" that I'm equivalent to some guy whose poor judgement got a bunch of his passengers killed. That's a grave insult and I don't take kindly to that kind of thing. It pisses me off when pe
I've come to the conclusion that you're not a pilot, you're a horses arse.
I said:
Why then do they teach stall recovery and unusual attitudes in a specialized aerobatic course?
You countered with paragraphs about how they teach stall recovery as part of the PPL training. I never said that basic stall recovery wasn't taught as part of the PPL you jackass. You state that I said this though I never did. I said that stall recovery and unusual attitudes were taught in a specialized course. You know perfectly well that there are such specialized courses, and that they go way beyond PPL theory or prac takes you.
Lets see what I actually said vs what you say I said:
- Stall recovery is only taught in specialized aerobatic courses
- Unusual attitude recovery is only taught in specialized aerobatic courses
No I said stall recovery and unsual attitudes is taught in specialized aerobatic courses. This is true. Those courses go much further than PPL training.
- Light aircraft land at the same speed as the maximum speed limit on a typical highway
I distinctly remember using the word comparable, and this is true for the most common aircraft. It is more usual for an aircraft to land around 60KIAS than it is around 30KIAS, yet you insist on bringing the less common aircraft into it.
- Typical takeoff angle of attack causes the nose of the aircraft to completely obscure the flight path
No I said that it can obstruct the aircraft's flight path and this is true. I made no mention of the word 'completely'.
- Avoiding terrain, avoiding restricted airspace, and maintaining altitude requires constant, twitchy attention similar to avoiding maniac drivers on a highway
No, that's your own little straw man you're creating. I said no such thing. What I did say is that there is terrain to clear and that your implying that there's nothing to avoid most of the time while flying is not true.
Then you have the gaul to lecture me about reading a comprehension and mock me about not being up to it. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I'm not wasting my time arguing with an arrogant idiot who thinks twisting other people's words and shooting down straw men amounts to proving them wrong. Go fly a kite.
If the very basic statement that I'm wrong about is that driving requires more raw physical reaction and short-term attention than flying, well I'm sorry but it's simply true. If you still don't believe me, maybe you'll remember this famous quote:
Maybe the way you fucking fly. You're suppose to be maintaining a scan of your primary instruments and you're suppose to be watching out for other traffic. If you don't do that, that makes you a lousy pilot because problems can occur at any time, not just on takeoff and landing.
"Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror." -- Pappy Boyington
No, flying with you would be sheer terror all the way because your attitude stinks.
I never said that you're not qualified to comment on flight because you're not a pilot. The reason you're not qualified to comment is because you don't know what you're talking about.
What a bunch of bullshit. Do I need to quote back your repeated challenges to me to produce my qualifications? You may or may not be a pilot but you've established you're a dishonest troll that goes back on what you've said.
Bah, enough of this. I'm talking to an infant.
Right now you can take a hot air baloon ride. If you're looking to do any pro aerial photography, you might still want a Gyro stabilized camera mount of some sort. They're expensive equipment but I hear you can rent them. On the other hand if you're an amateur the baloon ride is going to set you back enough bucks. Take a camera with built in image stabilization and it should be good enough.
And if you stall it because your engine died on takeoff then you are incompetent, plain and simple. First thing they drill into your head for these things: airspeed, airspeed, airspeed. Keep your speed up. Push that nose down. Keep flying the airplane. An engine failure on takeoff will not cause a low-altitude stall unless you are truly asleep at the wheel.
Ah yes because we're only talking about competent pilots that never make mistakes here.
And if you stall that 172 you will first have a very loud warning buzzer in your ear, then it will shudder and shake, and then it will stall. And even at this point, a power-on stall properly attended to will not result in much, if any, loss of altitude prior to recovery. This does not take exceptional skill either. It takes no more skill or fast reaction than pushing on your brakes when you see the car ahead of you push on his brakes.
Why then do they teach stall recovery and unusual attitudes in a specialized aerobatic course?
So you know some facts about flying, but you don't know about flying. Do you know what it feels like when you accidentally stall an airplane? Have you recovered one after losing a minimum amount of altitude? No, you have not. You may be full of the facts but you don't have the experience to interpret them.
I prove you wrong on some very basic statements you made - these are things that any good pilot should not get wrong, and you come back to "I'm a pilot. I have experience. I know best.". Well, it baffles me that an experienced pilot would insist that flying an aircraft does not require more care and skill than driving a car.
I'm not going to prove I'm a pilot simply because I choose to be anonymous here and I can't think of a good way to prove it without destroying that. But if you can think of something, I'll be happy to oblige.
That might be true but it's also very convenient. I know qualified pilots who I'd never fly with. I also know qualified pilots that I'd trust with my life.
Again, you know the facts but you don't have the experience. Your angle of attack ("alpha") is going to be 10-20 degrees at takeoff. Most airfoils stall at around 18 degrees, so it's necessarily going to be less than that angle. In most planes the nose does not stick out so far as to block your vision 18 degrees down, so you can still see where you're going. The only time this isn't true is when flying certain taildraggers where they sit so far back while on the ground that the nose blocks forward vision. But as they take off, they raise the tail and the pilot can see where he's going.
Anything occuring just below your line of sight is a danger, as is evident in most pilot training manuals I've come across. If it was easy to cite one I'd show you, but the only one I know of online is the pilot operating handbook made available by the FAA, and I'm not going to spend my time going through it to find a picture that may or may not be included in that particular book.
By the way what type aircraft are you checked out on? If I'm not qualified to comment on flight because I have some knowledge but am not a pilot, why are you qualified to present information on "most planes". Do you regularly fly commercial aircraft too? Have you forgotten that aircraft fly and even land in near zero visibility weather? THIS is the kind of blatant oversight that makes me wonder if you're really a pilot.
Unfortunately I have to get back to work now, but I will rebut one last thing:
That said, if I were going to give a child total control over a machine for sixty seconds, I'd rather do it in an airplane at a nice altitude than in a car at highway speeds. There's not much he'll be able to do in sixty seconds to kill us, whereas I'd count myself lucky to survive after the highway.
Well similar poor judgment and overconfidence to yours has cost lives:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593
All household users have been told to *never* use this account and why.
Congrats. You've just given all household users a way to create a headache for you by wiping your computer. Even if they don't do it intentionally, they may do it out of curiosity.
Also, logging on to this account invokes a 'Nuke' scrip that will DBAN type wipe the system if I don't deactivate it within 7 days
I hope your account has a script for checking that it hasn't been activated by mistake.
If you're really a pilot you should know much better.
A stall at a few thousand feet is trivial to deal with.
A stall at several thousand feet is not the problem. Most unintentional stalls don't happen at altitude, or there would be a lot less danger. When's the most likely time an engine will cut out on you? Just after takeoff.
First, airspeed control is easy. Most planes cruise at twice their stall speed or more. It's very difficult to inadvertently let your speed drop by that far.
In level flight they cruise at twice their stall speed. Most of the more common passenger aircraft which aren't turbo-charged have Vx (maximum climb) not much greater than Vs1 (stall speed in non-landing config). In a Cessna 172 Vs1 is around 48 KIAS and Vx is just over 60KIAS
Funny, I could say the same thing about you. Between the two of us, I have an FAA issued pilot certificate as well as a US state government driver's license. How about you?
Stating you have a license and proving you have one are very different matters. I could lie and state that I'm an airline pilot, and you wouldn't know the difference.
Source:
http://www.westernshoreaviation.com/Cessna%20172%20Checkout.pdf
I have no idea what this is supposed to refer to. By the time you raise the nose, you've had plenty of time to look down the runway. Once you raise the nose, you start to fly. At no point are you blind to your direction of travel.
You say you're a pilot yet your reasoning implies you think the direction you point the nose is where the aircraft is going to be in a few seconds. Your plane doesn't do that and you should know it. You're going to be travellng at some alpha on takeoff and that will continue as you climb out.
I've done this many times. I've landed unpowered aircraft in winds gusting to 25 knots. It definitely takes some work, but this phase only lasts a couple of minutes. Compare this to driving a car, where a twitch of your steering wheel can mean instant death at nearly any time.
Those couple of minutes are deadly if you don't get it right. Unless you're only ever driving your car at 120km between concrete barriers I don't know how you can say twitching your wheel can mean instant death at nearly any time. What's more if you're traveling in a car you can slow or stop the car at any time, and there are usually lots of places to pull over. In a plane you can't slow down or stop. If your engine dies you're in trouble and have to glide, and airports are separated by considerable distances. Consider also how much practice you've had to be able to land in 25knot wind. By contrast how long did it take you to learn to pull over in your car!
Generally you'll either have ample time to react to a collision threat or you'll have insufficient time. A threat which is recognized in time for you to react but which gives you only seconds to execute the proper maneuver is exceedingly rare. Compare this to driving, where it happens constantly.
The first sentence above is so obvious as to be almost meaningless. You either have time to react or you don't. Brilliant deduction. The second isn't true - how often do you land in dead calm wind? Any time you're flying relatively low there is terrain to avoid. You also may not be in danger of collision but straying outside of designated airspace, or off your designated altitude when flying IFR leads to plenty of collision dangers. The third is true - there are constant collision dangers driving a car. However you can slow down to any speed or pull over at any time which you can't do in a plane.
Funny, I could say the same thing about you. Between the two of us, I have an FAA issued pilot certificate as well as a US state government driver's license. How about you?
I don't have a license - I've studied a lot of the literature and spend time on simulators but there are several reasons I won't be going
There's a major difference between flying a plane and driving a car: a fast moving car is always one or two seconds away from utter disaster, whereas a plane nearly always gives its pilot much more time to react.
If you're suggesting that flying an aircraft is easier than driving a car, you know nothing about flying. Stall your plane and unless you're a few thousand feet high, good luck with that time to react theory.
Think about driving on the highway. You're driving along at 75MPH at a minimal safe distance from the guy in front of you. He slams on his brakes. You have at best perhaps three or four seconds to slam on yours, and that's assuming that your minimal safe distance is larger than is typical and that your braking system is at least as powerful as his. There are many other situations when driving a car where you only have a second or two to react. A small twitch of the steering wheel can send your car straight into a concrete pillar.
Think about flying a plane. You're traveling much faster. If you allow your airspeed to stall, your plane falls out of the sky. Often you have to be careful if you want to have visibility in the direction you're travelling. Think about raising the nose during takeoff. If you think that staying in your lane is hard, try lining up a plane with the runway and a crosswind blowing. If you're worried about collisions consider that unless you're doing exactly the right thing and both you and the flight controller are on the ball you won't have 4 seconds to react since the plane that hits you will have done so before you know what hit you.
Flying, on the other hand, is much slower and more cerebral. There are very few events which require immediate reactions.
It is very VERY clear you don't know what you're talking about. The slowest plane on landing is about as fast as a car is allowed to travel on a highway. I seriously suggest you have some idea what you're talking about before writing paragraphs and paragraphs about it.
Regarding your first point: X-Plane is an advanced commercial flight simulator package available for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It should compare favorably with MS Flight Simulator.
I've used the X-Plane demo. X-Plane isn't fantastic when it comes to graphics, multi-player environments and having a wide selection of addons. it doesn't model flight computers as well and is generally far behind. It's no substitute for MSFS, which is a shame because Microsoft has taken a great product in FS2004 and screwed the pooch with FSX in so many ways.
X-Plane does do it's airflow modelling differently. Where MSFS uses a table based approach, X-Plane models airflow and the way the air hits the wing. This modelling is crude but it's suppose to be closer to reality for out of control flight and allows you to experiment with wing designs if you've got the time and patience. So it's not garbage software or useless, but it's no substitute for MSFS.
You have some good points, but if you're wanting it to vacuum while you watch a movie you must have a really big house or a really quiet vacuum cleaner.
Medium sized house, but 2 stories.
Because Joe wants to run Calendar Creator or some such nonsense
This dismissive attitude is one major reason that Linux isn't further along taking over the desktop.
Name me a good Linux alternative to the following software:
1) Microsoft flight simulator 2004 or FSX
No Flightgear doesn't even come close to cutting it. It's years behind.
2) Chessmaster X or XI or even Fritz
Don't start with GNUChess or XBoard, which only do very basic chess, don't have any coaching
3) Rollercoaster Tycoon 3
Yes it's a game. It's also a simulator of sorts. However name me a 3D environment in which I can design a running theme park.
4) Realflight G3 or G4
I'm not even aware of a remote control flight simulation package on Linux. Practice here stops me crashing planes which means I get to spend less time and money building and more time flying them.
So far it's games and entertainment, but they're important to me. Let's get broader
5) Photoshop
Yes I know it's a typical complaint but Gimp really doesn't do everything I want to do and really is more awkward to use. I'm still trying to use GIMP where practical since I hate Vista with a passion and XP is being killed off. I'd like to get some familiarity with an environment i may be forced onto in a year or two.
6) Omnipage pro
Solutions that only OCR single column text are useless to me. I got Omnipage SE "for free" when I bought a printer, Okay so I paid for it but I didn't have an option to get the printer without it since it came bundled. Anyway the OCR solutions aren't near as feature complete.
7) IE only websites.
I'm willing to admit that when it comes to web browsers and Office software, Linux isn't far behind. However if I'm doing my banking with someone whose only catering to IE am I suppose to drop every other consideration and move to a different bank at great expense just so I can go to Linux? Or do I have to use VMWare? Be reasonable.
I won't go on, and I could.
I don't understand why there are four switches. I mean, I understand "Arm" and "Destruct", but why "test"? Does that blow up just a small section of the shuttle?
That button is for mission controllers that wanted to be astronauts but didn't make the cut. It blows up just one astronaut, but leaves the shuttle flying. Correct procedure when using this button is to laugh maniacally then yell "Who wants to be an astronaut now, bitch!" before flicking the switch.
If you're going to drive while distracted you need to be trained to deal with it.
Pilots manage a vehicle in 3 dimensions, with no marked paths or lanes. Their aircraft will fall out of the sky if speed is not managed. At the same time they need to make constant radio calls to inform tower, controller or circuit traffic of their position, and follow instructions or rules on where they should be. The difference is that they are trained to manage all the tasks much more thoroughly than drivers are. They're not taught to occassionally glance at their instruments the way a driver is. They're taught to scan them constantly. They're not taught nothing about how to communicate with the tower - they're taught to aviate, navigate and communicate prioritizing in that order.
What we need is to train drivers to handle the distraction. Want to see if the distraction is going to make them worse. Well first give them some experience dealing with the distraction and give them some guidelines on how to deal with it so they can practice. Only then should they be tested on how safe they are.
This idea that we can somehow eliminate all distractions and make driving safer and that we should all feel guilty otherwise is nonsense. In the real world, distractions will happen. Kids will fight in the back seat. (correctly dealt with by either pulling over or ignoring them). The radio, conversations, and books on tape are distractions that we need to teach drivers to deal with (it should be part of the practical driving exam). Other distractions are unacceptablet because they take full concentration and should be banned. Anything that takes your eyes off the road for more than a second would fall under this category. So changing a radio station should still be permitted but watching a dvd or texting should not.
The trouble is in this risk adverse society common sense has been thrown out the window and has been replace with scaremongering and guilt. Moronic!
So you don't mind if your ISP blocks your access to websites they don't like, or drop emails they disagree with?
Error: Bad analogy detected.
Detail: You pay your ISP to provide you with a service, that service being access to the Internet. In contrast you don't pay other freenet users (unless you choose to consider the bandwidth you allocate as payment)
In a few more years, I can really see apartments or dorm rooms with no stereo, no "computer," no TV, etc. You have one device, positioned so its charging booth is a good location for the projected screen. When it is not in use, it will roam the home vacuuming and taking the occasional picture for security.
Terrible idea. Not just trolling, I can see lots of problems:
1. Robot breaks, your household goes to shit because it did everything.
2. One device is still one device. What happens if you want your robot to vacuum while you watch a movie?
3. Privacy. Security footage while vaccuming? Can see it now - it catches you on the loo or your wife in the shower then accidentally shows it to your friends on the big screen.
4. Security. All that information in one place. When you'll be home, or what you're likely to be doing.
Separate dedicated devices are just fantastic. If you're going to diversify a device it has to do multiple similar things that can't happen at the same time. Eg. Plays music as well as video is a good idea. Plays music while being a security device is a gimmick.
The biggest problem with open source that most people have with it is user friendliness
Perhaps. However personally, I have no interest in how user friendly it is, just in how difficult and time consuming it is to get something done. I'm willing to learn so for me, missing, buggy or undocumented features are the bane of my existence with F/OSS. Roughly in that order. Granted I'd be described as a power user, developer, and hobbyist. Granted people aren't all as willing to learn the name and function of dozens of command line utilities. However zero dollar price is a big enough incentive to get past all that. That said what do you suggest an end user do when a feature is missing, or there's a bug no one is willing to fix?
An iPod does not require using iTunes. You can put Rockbox on an iPod and simply drag the music files directly onto the iPod mounted as a drive. There's also plenty of other programs that can read and write to an iTunes database.
Mod -1:Misleading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbox
Work on Rockbox for the iPod Nano (second and third gen), iPod Touch, and the iPod Classic has not begun due to firmware encryption that Apple places on all new iPods.
Nobody has seen Robert Palmer for a few weeks.
I think you mean decades.
As much as I value and love my privacy, I'd want someone to investigate if I went missing without a trace. Now once I'd been found if I said I didn't want to reveal my whereabouts I'd hope that was respected.
The only issue I see here is the potential for abuse. A police officer could lie to get the records and wouldn't be questioned about it. What if that police officer is corrupt? Sounds like a good way to find someone who was trying to dob them in and silence them. I bet other slashdotters can think of plenty of other hypotheticals for abuse.
The Olympics may once have been about international co-operation and peace, but the cynic in me doubts it. Regardless, today what it's about is is making money by getting people to rally around their sports stars and using IP law in every possible way to screw every possible cent out of every last person the IOC can get crazed enough to spend up big. Gold and doing your best and achieving to the limit my left nut! Gold digging more like. The athletes are often within fractions of a second of each other, achieving just about to the limit of human endurance (or at the very least within about 5% of it). The actions, rules and behaviour of the IOC clearly shows they're interested in money and not in any noble or virtuous cause!
The Olympics are for suckers.
I think I can argue that I was seeing the intended meaning. Can you actually picture a headline of "Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Best Friend"? "Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Boyfriend"?
Yeah, actually I can. I could see him saying "non-techy best friend" but that's because geeks tend to have friends that are also geeks. Geeks also tend to have girlfriends that aren't geeks because a) techy girlfriends are in fact in short supply and b) geeks are often attracted to someone that doesn't talk code all day.
See, I think it's the fact that they emphasized that she was someone's girlfriend and didn't feel they needed to put any information about level of computer literacy in the headline
See above. This just reflects the fact that the majority of geeks would be in relationships with non-geeks and that IT is male dominated. You might want to ask why it's male dominated. The only IT company that I ever worked for that was female dominated (my first serious IT job) had more competent females and a 50:50 ratio of male:female. Women are good at coding when they're interested and want to be in it. However most women I've even tried to cultivate an interest in computers in just couldn't care less. To them computers are uninteresting. Now I don't know how much of this is programmed by society and how much of the interest is hardwired from birth but either way the reality is MOST geeks have girlfriends that aren't computer enthusiasts or professionals. THAT is why it's easy to deduce the guy meant non-techy. It's not because he's a sexist pig that wants to imply that all women are stupid. Making out that this is the case, and hiding from the reality that IT is male dominated is just plain bone headed and does not achieve any kind of social equality for women.
And, like a lot of things, the problem can probably be put more on societal attitudes, which I freely admit have improved quite a bit even in my lifetime.
Nothing to do with social attitudes. Every IT place I've worked at has absolutely welcomed women into the group, but trying to find interested, passionate, motivated and qualified candidates is very hard. How much does that have to do with social attitudes turning women off computing? I don't know. What I do know is that it's very very rare to see a woman get excited about writing code. When you do though they're no less competent than the blokes.
Honestly who wants to work with a bunch of smelly blokes and no women if given the choice? I know there are guys out there but I ain't one of them. I'm also married, I don't cheat and I'm not a big flirt, so I'm not saying that because I'd like to hook up. Women just add variety and can be more pleasant and social at times. That is the ones that aren't intent on being nasty piece of work...but there are plenty of blokes who are nasty pieces of work.
Equality is about just that. Equality. Opportunity does not mean entitlement. You still have to work for it. When we see women filling computer classes and showing as much interest as men, we'll see more of a sea change in attitudes and it will become necessary to qualify the subject of an article like this one.
I was thinking hey neat till I read this in the article.
For one thing, the light comes to a focus far away from the foil sheet - with distances measured in kilometres, which means the camera and other instruments have to be mounted on a separate spacecraft. The instrument spacecraft would have to stay precisely aligned with the foil sheet, to within a millimetre or so.
Certainly not impossible, and still exciting, but this isn't going to be a mainstream or amateur tool any time soon.
Looks like there also may be a related patent to get past...
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6375326-claims.html
I'm not saying certain people should be off limits for such projects. Just that the headline emphasized the assumption that some geek's girlfriend must be computer illiterate, that's it.
Only if you take it that way, in which case you're the one being sexist. He may have implied she's no Linux enthusiast, but he could have implied that about his best friend. Why is it suddenly derogatory to imply that about his girlfriend?
A sexist headline would have read:
"Even my ditzy idiot girlfriend can use Ubuntu"
Even THAT doesn't imply all women (or all girlfriends) are ditzy and idiots.
Lets try:
"Even a chick can use Ubuntu"
Now if he'd done something closer to that, I might agree.
I agree that girlfriend isn't a full time occupation. I don't agree that he was being insulting towards women. I mean the guy had his girlfriend photoshop her face on his body. He's not beyond a little self-ridicule. He also went to great pains to point out she was intelligent and up to the challenge, just not an IT professional or hobbyist.
The program was:
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
It was immediately copied and modified to
10 PRINT "FUCK PISS SHIT DICK CUNT ASS"
20 GOTO 10
and was stopped within 10 minutes by a manager at the shop, but not before a couple of grannies could be outraged.