Marketing, rather than quality engineered products is what people are raving over. They'll take something shiny over something good any day.
I love my PDA, a Garmin iQue M5. Its 420MHz, has SDIO (I have an SDIO wifi card for it), bluetooth, a solid construction, and the screeen is large, bright, and easy to read. It also has a GPS and performs turn by turn directions. And it was on the market years before Apple even dreamed of the iPod Touch.
USB/serial adapters have *terrible* reliability when it comes to the actual serial data implementation. There are myriad problems that can result when trying to talk to devices such as embedded computers, GPS units, or data acquisition systems. This is even true with the manufacturer's Windows drivers running on Windows. They don't always work how you might expect.
Other people are also really, really, really dumb.:)
2.0 lbs for more than $1000 and less functionality definitely falls in the "really dumb" category for me. I don't hate Macs, I just think that Apple has become an elitist club that requires an insane membership fee to join, and perpetuates the mentality that you have to keep paying them to stay a member.
And that's why I will keep tweaking my old Powermac G3 and G4 towers so they will live forever; the last of the relics which were real Apple computers.
Avionics seems to match up with what Microsoft claims to patent:
-Mounted on the "dashboard" -Run multitasking OS -Vehicle related tasks (aircraft statistics such as fuel, engine speed, EGT, etc.) -Non-vehicle related tasks (radar, weather, communications)
Pretty sure technology that has these capabilities has been around longer than Microsoft's stupid patent.
Just to preface, I'm pointing out reality, not trolling here.
The Slashdot hive mind is a bunch of IT wonks. Most are not engineers, fewer are aerospace engineers, and still fewer are military aircraft aerospace engineers. Nobody should take the average slashdotter seriously when it comes to topics like this.
The "security through obscurity is bad" mantra is valid in their world of computers, which they then attempt to apply to everything. Not everything in the world is open source, and there are reasons for some things that are not. There ARE capabilities of military aircraft that are meant to be secret, but since people can SEE the aircraft, much effort has to go into obscuring what those capabilities really are. This is most true with the top speeds of jet aircraft. For fighter aircraft, it was possible to fairly accurately determine the top speed based on an approximate weight, lifting surface area and airfoils, and the geometry of the engines. To this day, I know engineers with PhDs with specialties in engine design that can accurately determine the thrust of a jet engine just by looking at one.
There's only so much "magic" that can be done with an aircraft to hide its true abilities. That which can be done is often very elegant, yet very complicated to achieve. The entire point is obscuration. Its creating a black box so an observer cannot figure out how the aircraft does something. Security through obscurity. That's the only option.
Its interesting that Microsoft won't go after TomTom's biggest competitor, which also makes Linux devices. Garmin also has Windows based devices (I have one) though.
Verizon will let anything on its network so long as you can get the proper PRL file. That is pretty cool and not a lot of people know about it. Then again, its difficult to work with CDMA phones. Sprint has more hackable phones on the market than Verizon, and Sprint doesn't cripple their devices as much as Verizon does. ATT/T-Mobile Samsung phones you could unlock and hack *from the keypad* without even needing the unlock code from the carrier.
I'm currently in a large, concrete and steel tower office building in Kansas. Looking at my blackberry 7290 that is connected to T-Mobile, I have four bars of signal strength.
40 miles west of here at home in the middle of nowhere, its just as good. Oh, and the service is that good even though we're in Sprint HQ's freakin back yard.
I wish I knew the answers to your questions. When I did hardcore aerospace R&D at a past job, I had a serious flying car project with one consulting client that I worked on. That flying car is still under construction, but a mockup has been displayed at a few major auto shows. Anyone else's projects naturally really interest me.
All I know about this team is that we loaned them a whole bunch of equipment.
GPS: Garmin started in 1989 to release a commercial product in 1990. GPS was up long before then. 3D Graphics Cards: My SGI 3130 would like a word with you. Practical Cell Phones: You dial, it calls. So it was the size of a brick, that doens't make it impractical. Wireless data: acoustic coupler and a shortwave radio. Instant messaging: the same shortwave radio you use for wireless data.
All these things existed in 1989, they've just been refined and marketed extremely heavily.
The vehicle flying to Africa is more a proof-of-concept than anything else, a fully functioning engineering prototype. The actual flying car model is slated to be released next year and is supposed to be a real car.
I know everyone likes to enjoy a good joke at Microsoft's expense, but nobody here is seriously considering what will happen to the thief if he is caught. Theft of a prototype device from a high profile company is enough to get the FBI involved. This could end up very ugly for the thief.
I bash on Microsoft as much as the next slashdotter, but if you have a good implementation of SharePoint, it can be helpful.
I'm at a big company and we have multiple SharePoint sites for content that is edited by few but viewed by many, and a Confluence wiki with a ton of spaces which is edited more frequently and used by more technical people.
Fluent starts at $60k for a single perpetual floating license. It wasn't until a couple years ago you could actually buy it, it was only available on lease. If you would like slightly better accuracy but with less speed, you could request the NASA CFD codes such as CFL3D, INS3D, FUN3D, or TetrUSS. Those are free, but its helpful to know some Fortran.
Try not to learn aerospace engineering the hard way, honestly, its very easy to get hurt. I would recommend going shopping for some good books on the subjects you're interested in. DARcorporation has some good books that may help you. Learn as much as you can before building and testing something. Aerospace prototyping does not often give you second chances if you make a mistake. I've been too close to too many projects that have put people in danger, injured them, or killed them; the Spectrum Aeronautical 33 prototype crash, the Grob spn prototype crash, and a Cessna Citation Mustang wing implosion to name a few. I've worked in partnership with or directly for Cessna, Piper, Bombardier/Learjet, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, and Garmin. Plenty of opportunities to see what can go wrong.
Anything retracting that is attached you need to consider cg excursion issues. Are you going to affect your static margin? More generally, how will you affect stability and control? Can the structure handle the additional load?
The FAA may not like the idea of flashing lights on an aircraft, but you should ask. If your aircraft is type'd as an experimental, that's one thing. But if it isn't, yes, at minimum it will cost you your license if you are caught with unapproved modifications such as those you describe. I believe the lighting on an aircraft is regulated. At worst, some drunken redneck will think you're a UFO and shoot you down with his 12 gauge off his back porch.:)
Something I don't thing TFA mentioned is that some airports, Wichita/ICH for example, play predatory bird sounds. I didn't notice it over at Cessna on the east side of the airport, but on the west side of the airport the system was LOUD.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all computers are for gamers.
How about the poor who have ideas that are anywhere from useful to revolutionary?
Mod parent up.
Marketing, rather than quality engineered products is what people are raving over. They'll take something shiny over something good any day.
I love my PDA, a Garmin iQue M5. Its 420MHz, has SDIO (I have an SDIO wifi card for it), bluetooth, a solid construction, and the screeen is large, bright, and easy to read. It also has a GPS and performs turn by turn directions. And it was on the market years before Apple even dreamed of the iPod Touch.
Nice! That's a good deal you got there.
USB/serial adapters have *terrible* reliability when it comes to the actual serial data implementation. There are myriad problems that can result when trying to talk to devices such as embedded computers, GPS units, or data acquisition systems. This is even true with the manufacturer's Windows drivers running on Windows. They don't always work how you might expect.
Other people are also really, really, really dumb. :)
2.0 lbs for more than $1000 and less functionality definitely falls in the "really dumb" category for me. I don't hate Macs, I just think that Apple has become an elitist club that requires an insane membership fee to join, and perpetuates the mentality that you have to keep paying them to stay a member.
And that's why I will keep tweaking my old Powermac G3 and G4 towers so they will live forever; the last of the relics which were real Apple computers.
I see your MB Air, and raise my generic Dell D630 company laptop valued at $1330:
- 2.00 GHz Core2 Duo
- 800MHz bus
- 2GB DDR2 RAM
- 120GB 5400rpm HD
- 128MB Nvidia Quadro NVS 135M
- 14.1" 1440x900 screen
- 802.11 Draft-n wireless, bluetooth
- 8x DVD+-RW built in
- Smart card reader
- PC Card slot
- A real DB-9M serial port
- 4.5 hr battery
- 5.1 lbs
A real computer geek makes sure he has a serial port.
Avionics seems to match up with what Microsoft claims to patent:
-Mounted on the "dashboard"
-Run multitasking OS
-Vehicle related tasks (aircraft statistics such as fuel, engine speed, EGT, etc.)
-Non-vehicle related tasks (radar, weather, communications)
Pretty sure technology that has these capabilities has been around longer than Microsoft's stupid patent.
Just to preface, I'm pointing out reality, not trolling here.
The Slashdot hive mind is a bunch of IT wonks. Most are not engineers, fewer are aerospace engineers, and still fewer are military aircraft aerospace engineers. Nobody should take the average slashdotter seriously when it comes to topics like this.
The "security through obscurity is bad" mantra is valid in their world of computers, which they then attempt to apply to everything. Not everything in the world is open source, and there are reasons for some things that are not. There ARE capabilities of military aircraft that are meant to be secret, but since people can SEE the aircraft, much effort has to go into obscuring what those capabilities really are. This is most true with the top speeds of jet aircraft. For fighter aircraft, it was possible to fairly accurately determine the top speed based on an approximate weight, lifting surface area and airfoils, and the geometry of the engines. To this day, I know engineers with PhDs with specialties in engine design that can accurately determine the thrust of a jet engine just by looking at one.
There's only so much "magic" that can be done with an aircraft to hide its true abilities. That which can be done is often very elegant, yet very complicated to achieve. The entire point is obscuration. Its creating a black box so an observer cannot figure out how the aircraft does something. Security through obscurity. That's the only option.
Its interesting that Microsoft won't go after TomTom's biggest competitor, which also makes Linux devices. Garmin also has Windows based devices (I have one) though.
Verizon will let anything on its network so long as you can get the proper PRL file. That is pretty cool and not a lot of people know about it. Then again, its difficult to work with CDMA phones. Sprint has more hackable phones on the market than Verizon, and Sprint doesn't cripple their devices as much as Verizon does. ATT/T-Mobile Samsung phones you could unlock and hack *from the keypad* without even needing the unlock code from the carrier.
The hell there isn't coverage in the midwest.
I'm currently in a large, concrete and steel tower office building in Kansas. Looking at my blackberry 7290 that is connected to T-Mobile, I have four bars of signal strength.
40 miles west of here at home in the middle of nowhere, its just as good. Oh, and the service is that good even though we're in Sprint HQ's freakin back yard.
I wish I knew the answers to your questions. When I did hardcore aerospace R&D at a past job, I had a serious flying car project with one consulting client that I worked on. That flying car is still under construction, but a mockup has been displayed at a few major auto shows. Anyone else's projects naturally really interest me.
All I know about this team is that we loaned them a whole bunch of equipment.
I take issue with the following:
GPS: Garmin started in 1989 to release a commercial product in 1990. GPS was up long before then.
3D Graphics Cards: My SGI 3130 would like a word with you.
Practical Cell Phones: You dial, it calls. So it was the size of a brick, that doens't make it impractical.
Wireless data: acoustic coupler and a shortwave radio.
Instant messaging: the same shortwave radio you use for wireless data.
All these things existed in 1989, they've just been refined and marketed extremely heavily.
The vehicle flying to Africa is more a proof-of-concept than anything else, a fully functioning engineering prototype. The actual flying car model is slated to be released next year and is supposed to be a real car.
Disclaimer: I work for one of their sponsors.
Actually, wait. Considering this is China, I'll accept QQ instead of pewpew.
"Joomla! Web Security"
This must be either the shortest or longest book ever written, I can't decide which.
I know everyone likes to enjoy a good joke at Microsoft's expense, but nobody here is seriously considering what will happen to the thief if he is caught. Theft of a prototype device from a high profile company is enough to get the FBI involved. This could end up very ugly for the thief.
With that attitude and week-old UID, its no wonder America is suffering in science and engineering.
Yes, and all Sun SPARC based computers will be outlawed because you can easily change the MAC address from the PROM command line.
And when Sun computers are outlawed, only outlaws will have Suns.
I bash on Microsoft as much as the next slashdotter, but if you have a good implementation of SharePoint, it can be helpful.
I'm at a big company and we have multiple SharePoint sites for content that is edited by few but viewed by many, and a Confluence wiki with a ton of spaces which is edited more frequently and used by more technical people.
Oh, its so easy!!
Give me a break.
It takes 2 seconds to swap batteries on my ancient Powerbook 520c, and I can even have two of them installed at once.
Apple *used* to make much, much more useful laptops.
Weight = money. At $10,000 per pound, it would have been a waste of money for a vehicle designed to last only three months.
If the vehicle were designed to last five years, it might be a different story.
Garmin-Asus demonstrated both the nuvifone G60 and nuvifone M20 at MWC. Perhaps you'd be interested in these.
In Soviet Russia, Soviet Russia damns YOU!
Fluent starts at $60k for a single perpetual floating license. It wasn't until a couple years ago you could actually buy it, it was only available on lease. If you would like slightly better accuracy but with less speed, you could request the NASA CFD codes such as CFL3D, INS3D, FUN3D, or TetrUSS. Those are free, but its helpful to know some Fortran.
Try not to learn aerospace engineering the hard way, honestly, its very easy to get hurt. I would recommend going shopping for some good books on the subjects you're interested in. DARcorporation has some good books that may help you. Learn as much as you can before building and testing something. Aerospace prototyping does not often give you second chances if you make a mistake. I've been too close to too many projects that have put people in danger, injured them, or killed them; the Spectrum Aeronautical 33 prototype crash, the Grob spn prototype crash, and a Cessna Citation Mustang wing implosion to name a few. I've worked in partnership with or directly for Cessna, Piper, Bombardier/Learjet, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, and Garmin. Plenty of opportunities to see what can go wrong.
Anything retracting that is attached you need to consider cg excursion issues. Are you going to affect your static margin? More generally, how will you affect stability and control? Can the structure handle the additional load?
The FAA may not like the idea of flashing lights on an aircraft, but you should ask. If your aircraft is type'd as an experimental, that's one thing. But if it isn't, yes, at minimum it will cost you your license if you are caught with unapproved modifications such as those you describe. I believe the lighting on an aircraft is regulated. At worst, some drunken redneck will think you're a UFO and shoot you down with his 12 gauge off his back porch. :)
Something I don't thing TFA mentioned is that some airports, Wichita/ICH for example, play predatory bird sounds. I didn't notice it over at Cessna on the east side of the airport, but on the west side of the airport the system was LOUD.