The last place I worked I took over license management of a very expensive and very complicated aircraft design software suite. Prior licensing was done with simple password protection and had been broken; piracy of the program was rampant. When I took over I switched to a certain brand of USB dongle that had both logic and memory onboard. Basically, the program checked for certain data on the key at different points during runtime. Parts of the program were also encrypted, and the decryption call in the program required a key on the dongle. The software that was shipped to you was *built* for you and had data embedded in it that matched the key you got. Distribution volume was low (maybe a few copies were shipped per week) so we could do this. For version upgrades or license upgrades, I could send a one-time use file to a customer which their software would read and reflash their key.
In case of a problem with the dongle, we didn't just give you the finger like Ubisoft does. The program would notify you that there was a problem, and the program would revert to a "shutdown mode" where you could still work with your data, but you couldn't perform calculations, and it would still let you save your work. This was very rare. For a program that cost almost $10,000 for a single perpetual floating license, I thought this was a fair system and almost never got complaints. We even offered a student version of the program at a 90% discount, which was the full program with a one year license which included full support and maintenance. After the one year, if you were still a student, you could renew for $50 (and I would send you a file to reflash your key), or you could send your key back and get the cost of the key refunded, $50.
Even though I haven't worked for that company since early 2008, to date, as far as I know, after I implemented this license management system, there have been no successful attacks against the program that have allowed it to be pirated. We were nice to our customers, gave their license management software useful features, made it easy for them to renew support or upgrade, and were quick to help them with any trouble. DRM has its place and can be useful, but its extremely important not to be a jerk to your customers. I gave customers what they paid for and didn't get in their way, sales went up, piracy went down.
I was rewarded by getting laid off, but that's another story.:(
I hope Gizmodo knows how to read the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act, because they are about to get backhanded with it. I'm particularly fond of the part where Apple can recover damages due to "unjust enrichment." Basically, every penny Gizmodo made from their egregious violation of the act and illegal disclosure of trade secrets can be awarded to Apple.
I'm not an Apple fanboi by any means, in fact I usually strongly dislike them. However, in this case, I hope they mop the floor with both the journalist and his employer who collectively didn't think the law applied to them.
My English friend's family is fairly stereotypically pasty white, except for my friend. She has a very tan complexion and her facial structure and figure differ significantly from other women in her family. She didn't understand why until she did some digging and discovered that her great-grandmother grew up in Kenya and the Seychelles, and that her great-great-grandmother was Kenyan and was married to an Indian man. The rest of her family as far back as she could tell was from England. It just took a few generations for some of the Kenyan and Indian traits to become visible again.
Replying to my own post because I can't type. The construction had damaged the sensor so it wasn't detecting cars, hence I got stuck at the red indefinitely and had to run it.
Here's a real situation where you really do have to run a red light.
There was some road construction going on in the city I live in a few years ago. At an intersection, there was a dedicated left turn lane with its own signal. The turn lane signal was driven by a sensor in the turn lane to detect the presence of a car. If there were no cars present, it wouldn't change the light from red to green. Well, I ended up in this turn lane not knowing that. The light never changed from red. What do you do?
It pisses me off that I have a European car that was *impossible* to buy in the US with a manual gearbox. Every other country it is sold in, a manual transmission is standard. To top it off, the automatic was an additional $2000 "option" when it was new. Luckily though, I talked with my local friendly dealer, and when the automatic eventually fails, I can get a manual transmission fitted as a replacement.
"Then the first CAFE standards were passed (to stop global warming/reduce dependence on foreign oil, whatever got Al Gore off at the time), and station wagons were no longer profitable to manufacture, what with the huge ass federal tax on them. Trucks, OTOH, weren't covered by CAFE, and people still needed cargo space, so the SUV was invented, and now you get people driving vehicles that are 'bigger' (read: taller), get worse milage than the station wagons did, and don't really have any bigger cargo space. Some are actually shorter and narrower than the station wagons were, and the extra height is taken up by the suspension, so you actually get less cargo space. "
Amen. I made a point to laugh at a friend who has a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I have a Volvo XC70 station wagon of the same year. I have a higher cargo capacity volume, a much more comfortable ride, significantly better safety, better build quality, and more than 50% better fuel economy and more power from an engine less than half the size of the Jeep. And the station wagon was cheaper to buy and has lower insurance. Go station wagon!
"Hi, I'm the government, and you need to go buy a new $10,000 (I'm not kidding) transponder for your airplane. And you're going to pay EVEN MORE for gas."
Unfortunately, INS is only so good; the data diverges over time and it can't be relied upon solely for navigation. GA aircraft don't have quite the same tech as military aircraft when it comes to INS. However if you do have a serious failure, INS can help you get somewhere where you can get your avionics repaired.
The really bad news is that as VORs and NDBs age and get shutdown, they are not being replaced. Along those lines, you're hard pressed to find an ADF on a modern GA aircraft. When flying to Chicago I liked to set the ADF to 720kHz during baseball season so I had navigation and could catch a Cubs game from half way across the country.
I agree with GuyFawkes. Find a retired engineer or engineering professor with some industry experience.
I was once much like you. I had education, and was working, but I didn't necessarily understand best practices in aerospace or have instinct. A lot of that comes with time, but a seed is necessary; a good mentor can be that seed. I was very, very lucky to have one of the greatest living aircraft designers as my mentor. You probably have some of his aircraft design books. He introduced me to engineering problems (and their consequences) in the aerospace field, and his lessons were like nothing you could ever learn in class. It was made very clear that in this field, your laziness, cheapness, or mistakes will kill people.
Story Time with Uncle Compmd: We were involved in design consultation for a small company designing and building a low cost, composite VLJ. It had been made clear that there were some things they *had* to do, regardless of cost, because otherwise they risked killing people. They didn't listen. They completed a prototype and had several successful test flights, until the folly of their ways came back to bite them. Conditions were SCT010 or close, with a 12kt crosswind gusting to 18kts. On takeoff, just after rotation, a crosswind gust slightly rolled the aircraft left. The pilot commanded a roll to the right to keep wings level for climbout. Instead, the aircraft rolled harder left. Assuming more gusting, the test pilot commanded more right roll. What the pilot didn't know is that in maintenance, a mechanic had accidentally reversed the control connections to the ailerons. The pilot rolled the aircraft far enough that the left wing clipped the ground, causing the aircraft to flip end over end, crashing into the runway, killing both pilots. The moral of the story was not to design your controls in such a way that you could hook them up backwards! This simple, stupid lesson has claimed many lives, and yet engineers and mechanics keep repeating their past mistakes. That's not a lesson you learn in school, its something you learn from the real world, from real engineers.
Today, I might not be as old or as experienced as some of my fellow engineers, but I had the benefit of a mentor who was passionate about his field, and that has shaped me into the engineer I am like no class ever could. He knew that his stories could shape future engineers and did his best to share them with younger generations. Because of that mentoring, I've had many experienced engineers look at me completely differently when they find out who I worked under. I haven't seen my mentor in a couple years since I've gone on to bigger and better things. However, I've taken everything I've learned from him with me, and find myself repeating stories (just like right now) to younger engineers, and helping the company I work for make great products.
So go find yourself an old aerospace engineer and talk to him. Odds are you'll make his day when you ask for some stories and lessons learned.
"I'm sure a shuttle-class runway is accessible every 1200 miles or so, at least with a lot of imagination and creative hot-dog piloting."
The only places in the US where the shuttle can be reasonably safely landed with sufficient support infrastructure are the Cape, Edwards AFB, and KSLN (Salina, Kansas Municipal Airport). Not kidding. KSLN is still used for Air Force activity. Its scary enough flying a little Piper there in the pattern with C-17s, knowing its possible the freaking space shuttle could be entering for long final is too much.:)
Also, there's no such thing as hot-dog piloting a glider with the aerodynamics of the shuttle. Its not called a "flying brick" for nothing...
"Amusingly, you're missing that the only possible use for wings on a re-entry vehicle is military..."
No, a perfectly legitimate non-military reason for wings is so you can choose your landing site. The Russians basically aim the Soyuz at Asia and cross their fingers. Our capsules had huge landing zones and tons of people were devoted to patrolling the ocean to spot and recover the crew and craft.
"you can simply pick a bizarre orbit to avoid them, with a bizarre reentry requiring some gliding around."
I do not think you appreciate the difficulty of orbital dynamics. You also can't just have a "bizarre reentry" because there are problems with energy dissipation and drag. There is a very well defined process for deorbiting the shuttle, and it does not leave much room for error.
I'm glad it works well for you. In case you were unaware, the US is more than 10 cities whose names everyone knows. For those of us who live in the great expanse that is the midwest, the nearest police officer is often many, many miles away. Yes, I'll sit around waiting for that police officer to arrive while a burglar who decides he doesn't want a witness bludgeons me to death with the crowbar he used to break in, that sounds like a great idea!
No. My safety in my home is my responsibility, plain and simple. If I can facilitate it with my Tokarev or HK91, so be it.
Your choice of the phrase "wild west" is interesting; much of the midwest and west *is* still quite sparsely populated and effectively "wild."
"Bottom line in this case: we need to pass laws to force all automakers to publish all their code online so it can be peer reviewed by the people who use it."
No, because (to paraphrase Clarkson) you'll end up with some guy named Keith who watches Eastenders who will decide that he knows what he's looking at and will say something is completely wrong, wasting the community's collective time.
"The interface to automobile computers should be a widely used standard such as USB"
Ask yourself this question: "Do I trust my life to a USB cable?" We have CAN, it is a fault tolerant, safety critical bus. Connecting and disconnecting devices from a CAN bus is more complicated than USB. Safety critical systems do not touch non-critical systems, you're suggesting violating one of the fundamental rules of control theory.
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The last place I worked I took over license management of a very expensive and very complicated aircraft design software suite. Prior licensing was done with simple password protection and had been broken; piracy of the program was rampant. When I took over I switched to a certain brand of USB dongle that had both logic and memory onboard. Basically, the program checked for certain data on the key at different points during runtime. Parts of the program were also encrypted, and the decryption call in the program required a key on the dongle. The software that was shipped to you was *built* for you and had data embedded in it that matched the key you got. Distribution volume was low (maybe a few copies were shipped per week) so we could do this. For version upgrades or license upgrades, I could send a one-time use file to a customer which their software would read and reflash their key.
In case of a problem with the dongle, we didn't just give you the finger like Ubisoft does. The program would notify you that there was a problem, and the program would revert to a "shutdown mode" where you could still work with your data, but you couldn't perform calculations, and it would still let you save your work. This was very rare. For a program that cost almost $10,000 for a single perpetual floating license, I thought this was a fair system and almost never got complaints. We even offered a student version of the program at a 90% discount, which was the full program with a one year license which included full support and maintenance. After the one year, if you were still a student, you could renew for $50 (and I would send you a file to reflash your key), or you could send your key back and get the cost of the key refunded, $50.
Even though I haven't worked for that company since early 2008, to date, as far as I know, after I implemented this license management system, there have been no successful attacks against the program that have allowed it to be pirated. We were nice to our customers, gave their license management software useful features, made it easy for them to renew support or upgrade, and were quick to help them with any trouble. DRM has its place and can be useful, but its extremely important not to be a jerk to your customers. I gave customers what they paid for and didn't get in their way, sales went up, piracy went down.
I was rewarded by getting laid off, but that's another story. :(
Definitely not on the Apple App Store.
I hope Gizmodo knows how to read the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act, because they are about to get backhanded with it. I'm particularly fond of the part where Apple can recover damages due to "unjust enrichment." Basically, every penny Gizmodo made from their egregious violation of the act and illegal disclosure of trade secrets can be awarded to Apple.
I'm not an Apple fanboi by any means, in fact I usually strongly dislike them. However, in this case, I hope they mop the floor with both the journalist and his employer who collectively didn't think the law applied to them.
My English friend's family is fairly stereotypically pasty white, except for my friend. She has a very tan complexion and her facial structure and figure differ significantly from other women in her family. She didn't understand why until she did some digging and discovered that her great-grandmother grew up in Kenya and the Seychelles, and that her great-great-grandmother was Kenyan and was married to an Indian man. The rest of her family as far back as she could tell was from England. It just took a few generations for some of the Kenyan and Indian traits to become visible again.
"What can human beings do in space that robots can't?"
Not get stuck in two inches of sand on Mars.
Yo dawg, let me have a look at your keyboard for a few minutes, I swear nothing bad will happen to it. So I guess in your RDF none of thisexists?
I'm particularly fond of the bugs that allow arbitrary code execution through a spell checker or from viewing a QuickTime movie.
Replying to my own post because I can't type. The construction had damaged the sensor so it wasn't detecting cars, hence I got stuck at the red indefinitely and had to run it.
Here's a real situation where you really do have to run a red light.
There was some road construction going on in the city I live in a few years ago. At an intersection, there was a dedicated left turn lane with its own signal. The turn lane signal was driven by a sensor in the turn lane to detect the presence of a car. If there were no cars present, it wouldn't change the light from red to green. Well, I ended up in this turn lane not knowing that. The light never changed from red. What do you do?
"and all type of other EM emitting radiation devices."
I think something else is going to beat you to the guy: the sun.
This guy Emmitt Brown told me he knows some Libyans that will sell you uranium.
Yes, they are that rare.
It pisses me off that I have a European car that was *impossible* to buy in the US with a manual gearbox. Every other country it is sold in, a manual transmission is standard. To top it off, the automatic was an additional $2000 "option" when it was new. Luckily though, I talked with my local friendly dealer, and when the automatic eventually fails, I can get a manual transmission fitted as a replacement.
What model? I use an SX-110. Works like a charm.
Good job indeed. Good job at writing the prequel to the new "Repo Man" movie.
"Then the first CAFE standards were passed (to stop global warming/reduce dependence on foreign oil, whatever got Al Gore off at the time), and station wagons were no longer profitable to manufacture, what with the huge ass federal tax on them. Trucks, OTOH, weren't covered by CAFE, and people still needed cargo space, so the SUV was invented, and now you get people driving vehicles that are 'bigger' (read: taller), get worse milage than the station wagons did, and don't really have any bigger cargo space. Some are actually shorter and narrower than the station wagons were, and the extra height is taken up by the suspension, so you actually get less cargo space. "
Amen. I made a point to laugh at a friend who has a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I have a Volvo XC70 station wagon of the same year. I have a higher cargo capacity volume, a much more comfortable ride, significantly better safety, better build quality, and more than 50% better fuel economy and more power from an engine less than half the size of the Jeep. And the station wagon was cheaper to buy and has lower insurance. Go station wagon!
"80 gigs for $224 ain't bad..."
I beg to differ. That's more than I paid for my entire netbook, and I got twice the storage.
Mod Parent Up.
"Hi, I'm the government, and you need to go buy a new $10,000 (I'm not kidding) transponder for your airplane. And you're going to pay EVEN MORE for gas."
You were ok up to point three.
I wish the radar good luck at tracking me in an all-composite Diamond DA40 with the transponder off.
Unfortunately, INS is only so good; the data diverges over time and it can't be relied upon solely for navigation. GA aircraft don't have quite the same tech as military aircraft when it comes to INS. However if you do have a serious failure, INS can help you get somewhere where you can get your avionics repaired.
The really bad news is that as VORs and NDBs age and get shutdown, they are not being replaced. Along those lines, you're hard pressed to find an ADF on a modern GA aircraft. When flying to Chicago I liked to set the ADF to 720kHz during baseball season so I had navigation and could catch a Cubs game from half way across the country.
Blood Type AB Load Letter, what the fsck does that mean?
I still have several IDE Type 17 42MB hard drives, both in 5.25" and 3.5" form factors.
I agree with GuyFawkes. Find a retired engineer or engineering professor with some industry experience.
I was once much like you. I had education, and was working, but I didn't necessarily understand best practices in aerospace or have instinct. A lot of that comes with time, but a seed is necessary; a good mentor can be that seed. I was very, very lucky to have one of the greatest living aircraft designers as my mentor. You probably have some of his aircraft design books. He introduced me to engineering problems (and their consequences) in the aerospace field, and his lessons were like nothing you could ever learn in class. It was made very clear that in this field, your laziness, cheapness, or mistakes will kill people.
Story Time with Uncle Compmd:
We were involved in design consultation for a small company designing and building a low cost, composite VLJ. It had been made clear that there were some things they *had* to do, regardless of cost, because otherwise they risked killing people. They didn't listen. They completed a prototype and had several successful test flights, until the folly of their ways came back to bite them. Conditions were SCT010 or close, with a 12kt crosswind gusting to 18kts. On takeoff, just after rotation, a crosswind gust slightly rolled the aircraft left. The pilot commanded a roll to the right to keep wings level for climbout. Instead, the aircraft rolled harder left. Assuming more gusting, the test pilot commanded more right roll. What the pilot didn't know is that in maintenance, a mechanic had accidentally reversed the control connections to the ailerons. The pilot rolled the aircraft far enough that the left wing clipped the ground, causing the aircraft to flip end over end, crashing into the runway, killing both pilots. The moral of the story was not to design your controls in such a way that you could hook them up backwards! This simple, stupid lesson has claimed many lives, and yet engineers and mechanics keep repeating their past mistakes. That's not a lesson you learn in school, its something you learn from the real world, from real engineers.
Today, I might not be as old or as experienced as some of my fellow engineers, but I had the benefit of a mentor who was passionate about his field, and that has shaped me into the engineer I am like no class ever could. He knew that his stories could shape future engineers and did his best to share them with younger generations. Because of that mentoring, I've had many experienced engineers look at me completely differently when they find out who I worked under. I haven't seen my mentor in a couple years since I've gone on to bigger and better things. However, I've taken everything I've learned from him with me, and find myself repeating stories (just like right now) to younger engineers, and helping the company I work for make great products.
So go find yourself an old aerospace engineer and talk to him. Odds are you'll make his day when you ask for some stories and lessons learned.
"I'm sure a shuttle-class runway is accessible every 1200 miles or so, at least with a lot of imagination and creative hot-dog piloting."
The only places in the US where the shuttle can be reasonably safely landed with sufficient support infrastructure are the Cape, Edwards AFB, and KSLN (Salina, Kansas Municipal Airport). Not kidding. KSLN is still used for Air Force activity. Its scary enough flying a little Piper there in the pattern with C-17s, knowing its possible the freaking space shuttle could be entering for long final is too much. :)
Also, there's no such thing as hot-dog piloting a glider with the aerodynamics of the shuttle. Its not called a "flying brick" for nothing...
"Amusingly, you're missing that the only possible use for wings on a re-entry vehicle is military..."
No, a perfectly legitimate non-military reason for wings is so you can choose your landing site. The Russians basically aim the Soyuz at Asia and cross their fingers. Our capsules had huge landing zones and tons of people were devoted to patrolling the ocean to spot and recover the crew and craft.
"you can simply pick a bizarre orbit to avoid them, with a bizarre reentry requiring some gliding around."
I do not think you appreciate the difficulty of orbital dynamics. You also can't just have a "bizarre reentry" because there are problems with energy dissipation and drag. There is a very well defined process for deorbiting the shuttle, and it does not leave much room for error.
Sometimes you'll do anything to get a fix. Maybe you'll try to desalinate seawater to get your salt if you can't get good herbs.
The lesson here is that if you can't do the thyme, don't do the brine.
OK, I'll show myself out...
I'm glad it works well for you. In case you were unaware, the US is more than 10 cities whose names everyone knows. For those of us who live in the great expanse that is the midwest, the nearest police officer is often many, many miles away. Yes, I'll sit around waiting for that police officer to arrive while a burglar who decides he doesn't want a witness bludgeons me to death with the crowbar he used to break in, that sounds like a great idea!
No. My safety in my home is my responsibility, plain and simple. If I can facilitate it with my Tokarev or HK91, so be it.
Your choice of the phrase "wild west" is interesting; much of the midwest and west *is* still quite sparsely populated and effectively "wild."
"Bottom line in this case: we need to pass laws to force all automakers to publish all their code online so it can be peer reviewed by the people who use it."
No, because (to paraphrase Clarkson) you'll end up with some guy named Keith who watches Eastenders who will decide that he knows what he's looking at and will say something is completely wrong, wasting the community's collective time.
"The interface to automobile computers should be a widely used standard such as USB"
Ask yourself this question: "Do I trust my life to a USB cable?" We have CAN, it is a fault tolerant, safety critical bus. Connecting and disconnecting devices from a CAN bus is more complicated than USB. Safety critical systems do not touch non-critical systems, you're suggesting violating one of the fundamental rules of control theory.