Thanks for your comment, I couldn't have put it better. There is a logic behind the dropping of the bombs and its use as demonstration of determination; a disgusting logic, but compellingly simple. And probably true.
In these days, too many people seem to have forgotten what war means. It's something on TV, something that happens to other countries, far away. WWII was over 60 years ago, who cares about lessons learnt back then..?
You mention Iran and North Korea, which of course makes one wonder whether Afghanistan and Irak had been openly attacked if they had had nuclear weapons themselves...
The quote is not originally by some US Marine, however heroic he might have been. It was king Frederick II of Prussia who in 17xx yelled at his fleeing soldiers "Hunde, wollt Ihr ewig leben?".
Sure we have tons of eccentric, inspired software, but 90% of is it grossly unpolished, be it the config file paradigm, or glitchy X interfaces, or vicious compile-time issues. Rather than reinvent the wheel 7 times for each software task, why aren't we cleaning up the rough gems ?
Because it sucks to do these kind of tasks. Coding is the fun part, but making the application usable to non-coders is a tedious work, which is often left in sub-optimal state. As a programmer myself, when I have written some kind of tools or bigger application, I always get the shiver by thinking that I now have to spend at least the same amount of time to make it usable for others. If I was allowed to leave it undone, I would gladly do so.
I always remember of one particular example, where I worte a part of a bigger application, which was used to perform certain standard simulations/calculations. The problem was, that ca 50% of its users were technical sales people, 40% mechanical engineers and 10% hybrids between mechanical engineer and software engineer. Now, the 10% were doing just fine, writing own modules, being thankful for the great freedom they had in this particular application. The 40% adapted quickly, especially to the type of simulation performed and the underlying theory. The problem was the 50% technical sales people, that not only refused to learn what the application actually did (and how), but they also complained about the wealth of information, the overwhelming freedom of choice! To them, the design of the dialog boxes mattered more than the theoretical base of the simulation. One particular standard calculation was not accepted, due to "a too complicated user dialog". What I did was to enlargen the OK-button and to hide all specific tuning options under a smaller "Advanced" button. Suddently, it was accepted.
What I learned during that time, was that there a very different kind of users. And if I want them to use my program, I have to make sure that I address every single one of their issues with it, however trivial they might seem to me. This lesson is a hard one, but it is one that the OSS community has to learn, if it wants their programs to be widely used. Arguments like "You've got a problem? Well, here's the source code, do it yourself!" are more than counter-productive in that regard.
Thank you Mr. I-wouldn't-recognize-sarcasm-or-a-joke-if-it-bit-m e-in-the-aft-end for your insightful comment.
The one thing I always enjoy is destroying other's sarcasms or irony by not responding to it, but just playing along. Seems like it worked once more. Gotcha..!
So how does the system compensate when the wheels slip like if the car is on snow
They are using the rotational velocity of the wheels to integrate the travelled distance. Modern cars have sensors in all four wheels to detect and prevent slip and blocked brakes. Using all four wheel sensors together with known engine speed, one can calculate the car's current position (given you know the tire diameter more or less accurately, but that you have to know for determining car speed, anyway).
I saw this on a Japanese TV-Show back then in the 80s... Guess it never went into production.
But check out last years EVOLVE project (more here), which included the design of autonomous wheel corners. With these babies, you can set all the wheels of your car to the same yaw angle and so translate your car, i.e. move it parallel to its lateral axis. Parallel parking becomes a piece of cake! Unfortunately, 90deg angles require a somewhat more sophisticated steering rack, so you can't just enter the parking space perpendicularily...
Nowhere, that's how I got to the conclusion that this story must have been submitted by one of my colleagues (am associated to that department, myself)...:)
As far as I remember, the computer controlling the electro-servo hydraulics actually *is* powered by Linux. I suppose it was RTLT, because the students and several of my colleagues did much modelling in Simulink.
Well, there is some more information available, but this year's students did not as equally good a job of documenting their project as the 2003 students (Swedish only, though)...
You just know this is exemplifying the trends the corporations are pushing in farming - you need to own $500K worth of equipment to even start, you need to be a million in debt to the bank, and lots of chemicals and fertilizers are the best solution to crops!
Darn, hadn't I spent my mod points already, you would have got an "+1 Insightful"!
Well, I for one won't be part of this. I am an individualist!
No, wait... D'OH!
Well, than I can just as well continue:)
I find it refreshing that MM reflects the accusations of propaganda (hiliarious, thinking of whom they come from)... by stating upfront that he doesn't wanted to make some balanced documentary. That kind of integrity is very much missed on Fox News, the supposedly "fair and balanced" news channel...
For us who are still being trapped in the Windoze world, there is Total Commander, which is even available for WinCE/PPC (yet there the 2 window style is disabled per default due to real estate problems).
Indeed, that Radoslaw Sokol dude has made OSS a huge disfavour. Can one be more arrogant? Complaining about users who "abuse" tabbed browsers by opening a completely different page in a tab, rather than opening it in a whole new instance of the browser. Oh cry me a river, pal...
And oh yeah, we who favour file browsing seem to be too stupid to get the analogy of the drawer. But wait, I usually look at my drawers from above, so in top view, they actually replace each other. Couldn't this be an argument for the rightness of browsers-style file managers?? Got you...
Yeah pretty amazing how one can get it that wrong... Of course, the profit is the motive, the mission statement etc is the means, and everything else are just boundary conditions.
I agree 100% with your view (even though I don't with some of the views above). Open discussion is the key to learning from anything that went wrong, be it a mere mistake, a fault or a horrible crime as the Holocoust.
Hehe, the torque converter is actually quite complicated, once you leave the superficious explanations and delve into the wonderful world of hydrodynamics...:)
Granted, hydraulics is an engineering discipline whose research, due to historical reasons, is geographically concentrated in (but not per sé limited to) Europe - but there is lots of information on the net, especially to automatic transmissions and how they are governed.
Note, I still agree that these things are pretty neat engineering stuff, but it is far from being a miracle or something. And IMHO it is not a computer, because it is not universally programmable. The functions are hard-coded in the hydraulic circuit and its components. By the way, saving states can be achieved by the means of accumulators, the hydraulics equivalent to mechanical springs or electric condensators. This is also used in another interesting application of hydraulics (even though not evident at first glance): modern fuel injection equipment, like unit injectors.
What? Automatic transmissions, like those used in cars??
Can't really believe that you are serious. Please provide some more explanation / some links in case I misunderstood you.
Well, as a German I am extremely grateful that Nazi-Germany didn't win the war. As a self-thinking individual I would have probably ended up in the camps, myself.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your comment, I couldn't have put it better. There is a logic behind the dropping of the bombs and its use as demonstration of determination; a disgusting logic, but compellingly simple. And probably true.
In these days, too many people seem to have forgotten what war means. It's something on TV, something that happens to other countries, far away. WWII was over 60 years ago, who cares about lessons learnt back then..?
You mention Iran and North Korea, which of course makes one wonder whether Afghanistan and Irak had been openly attacked if they had had nuclear weapons themselves...
Again, thanks for your reflections.
http://www.wri-irg.org
Correct "more"-link
Here's a film from the Internet Archive:
...
A Tale of Two Cities" (1946)
There is be more
The quote is not originally by some US Marine, however heroic he might have been. It was king Frederick II of Prussia who in 17xx yelled at his fleeing soldiers "Hunde, wollt Ihr ewig leben?".
This is somewhat old news, The Register has reported about this in December 2002....
Sure we have tons of eccentric, inspired software, but 90% of is it grossly unpolished, be it the config file paradigm, or glitchy X interfaces, or vicious compile-time issues. Rather than reinvent the wheel 7 times for each software task, why aren't we cleaning up the rough gems ?
Because it sucks to do these kind of tasks. Coding is the fun part, but making the application usable to non-coders is a tedious work, which is often left in sub-optimal state.
As a programmer myself, when I have written some kind of tools or bigger application, I always get the shiver by thinking that I now have to spend at least the same amount of time to make it usable for others. If I was allowed to leave it undone, I would gladly do so.
I always remember of one particular example, where I worte a part of a bigger application, which was used to perform certain standard simulations/calculations. The problem was, that ca 50% of its users were technical sales people, 40% mechanical engineers and 10% hybrids between mechanical engineer and software engineer. Now, the 10% were doing just fine, writing own modules, being thankful for the great freedom they had in this particular application. The 40% adapted quickly, especially to the type of simulation performed and the underlying theory. The problem was the 50% technical sales people, that not only refused to learn what the application actually did (and how), but they also complained about the wealth of information, the overwhelming freedom of choice! To them, the design of the dialog boxes mattered more than the theoretical base of the simulation. One particular standard calculation was not accepted, due to "a too complicated user dialog". What I did was to enlargen the OK-button and to hide all specific tuning options under a smaller "Advanced" button. Suddently, it was accepted.
What I learned during that time, was that there a very different kind of users. And if I want them to use my program, I have to make sure that I address every single one of their issues with it, however trivial they might seem to me. This lesson is a hard one, but it is one that the OSS community has to learn, if it wants their programs to be widely used. Arguments like "You've got a problem? Well, here's the source code, do it yourself!" are more than counter-productive in that regard.
Nice example of how stereotypes can be so often repeated that in the end the victims are believing the crap themselves...
And yes, of course you meant to be funny. I know. I've laughed my belly of, now I'm exhausted...
The BOFH's guide to webfiltering can be found here: "BOFH peers through the proxy mirror"... :)
Thank you Mr. I-wouldn't-recognize-sarcasm-or-a-joke-if-it-bit-m e-in-the-aft-end for your insightful comment.
The one thing I always enjoy is destroying other's sarcasms or irony by not responding to it, but just playing along. Seems like it worked once more. Gotcha..!
So how does the system compensate when the wheels slip like if the car is on snow
They are using the rotational velocity of the wheels to integrate the travelled distance. Modern cars have sensors in all four wheels to detect and prevent slip and blocked brakes. Using all four wheel sensors together with known engine speed, one can calculate the car's current position (given you know the tire diameter more or less accurately, but that you have to know for determining car speed, anyway).
I saw this on a Japanese TV-Show back then in the 80s... Guess it never went into production.
But check out last years EVOLVE project (more here), which included the design of autonomous wheel corners. With these babies, you can set all the wheels of your car to the same yaw angle and so translate your car, i.e. move it parallel to its lateral axis. Parallel parking becomes a piece of cake! Unfortunately, 90deg angles require a somewhat more sophisticated steering rack, so you can't just enter the parking space perpendicularily...
...unless you are capable of realising that (s)he was joking...
:)
RTFA'd, saw the movies. Where does it say Linux?
:)
Nowhere, that's how I got to the conclusion that this story must have been submitted by one of my colleagues (am associated to that department, myself)...
As far as I remember, the computer controlling the electro-servo hydraulics actually *is* powered by Linux. I suppose it was RTLT, because the students and several of my colleagues did much modelling in Simulink.
Well, there is some more information available, but this year's students did not as equally good a job of documenting their project as the 2003 students (Swedish only, though)...
You just know this is exemplifying the trends the corporations are pushing in farming - you need to own $500K worth of equipment to even start, you need to be a million in debt to the bank, and lots of chemicals and fertilizers are the best solution to crops!
Darn, hadn't I spent my mod points already, you would have got an "+1 Insightful"!
Nah, this car is *not* powered by Linux, only the computer that controls the parking system is. But it was a cool project...
I'd wager this thread will get about 1200 posts
:)
Well, I for one won't be part of this. I am an individualist!
No, wait... D'OH!
Well, than I can just as well continue
I find it refreshing that MM reflects the accusations of propaganda (hiliarious, thinking of whom they come from)... by stating upfront that he doesn't wanted to make some balanced documentary. That kind of integrity is very much missed on Fox News, the supposedly "fair and balanced" news channel...
For us who are still being trapped in the Windoze world, there is Total Commander, which is even available for WinCE/PPC (yet there the 2 window style is disabled per default due to real estate problems).
Indeed, that Radoslaw Sokol dude has made OSS a huge disfavour. Can one be more arrogant? Complaining about users who "abuse" tabbed browsers by opening a completely different page in a tab, rather than opening it in a whole new instance of the browser. Oh cry me a river, pal...
And oh yeah, we who favour file browsing seem to be too stupid to get the analogy of the drawer. But wait, I usually look at my drawers from above, so in top view, they actually replace each other. Couldn't this be an argument for the rightness of browsers-style file managers?? Got you...
Yeah pretty amazing how one can get it that wrong...
Of course, the profit is the motive, the mission statement etc is the means, and everything else are just boundary conditions.
I agree 100% with your view (even though I don't with some of the views above). Open discussion is the key to learning from anything that went wrong, be it a mere mistake, a fault or a horrible crime as the Holocoust.
Hehe, the torque converter is actually quite complicated, once you leave the superficious explanations and delve into the wonderful world of hydrodynamics... :)
So, I would give as much credit to Föttinger (the torque converter guy) as to all the other great automotive inventors.
Man, what drug are you on?
Granted, hydraulics is an engineering discipline whose research, due to historical reasons, is geographically concentrated in (but not per sé limited to) Europe - but there is lots of information on the net, especially to automatic transmissions and how they are governed.
Note, I still agree that these things are pretty neat engineering stuff, but it is far from being a miracle or something. And IMHO it is not a computer, because it is not universally programmable. The functions are hard-coded in the hydraulic circuit and its components. By the way, saving states can be achieved by the means of accumulators, the hydraulics equivalent to mechanical springs or electric condensators. This is also used in another interesting application of hydraulics (even though not evident at first glance): modern fuel injection equipment, like unit injectors.
Do you have a link for that? Sounds interesting...
What? Automatic transmissions, like those used in cars??
Can't really believe that you are serious. Please provide some more explanation / some links in case I misunderstood you.
Well, as a German I am extremely grateful that Nazi-Germany didn't win the war. As a self-thinking individual I would have probably ended up in the camps, myself.