The Canadian Navy has pioneered a system similar to RAST for their operations in the North Atlantic. They still fly ancient sea king helicopters on tiny frigates that pitch all over the place, but they can land in higher seas than anyone else. They lower a steel cable to the deck, where is is secured to a winch. The helicopter hovers over the landing spot, trying to get into position. A ship-based crew judges when the timing is perfect and activates the winch. It slams the helo on to the deck pretty much instantaneously. The landing is hard, but it works. The only problem they have with it is that our oldest sea kings still have vacuum tube avionics, and when they perform this manouvre the shock of landing breaks every single tube on the bird.
Depends - older airliners and small planes would definately have a problem, though I'd be surprised if they couldn't shake the balloon with some (extreme) manouvers. Newer airliners are capable of a Class C Instrument approach (uses DGPS) - they can touch down and brake (but not taxi) on instruments alone. So after they landed someone would have to come out and pull the balloon off the windshield.
It's pretty much exclusively for drill and dress parades. Seriously, I have friends in Canadian Forces recce units, and they train about 2-6 hours a year with bayonets, and only right before they have a big parade like for rememberance day, canada day, or this year, VE day.
This is actually true. Several months after they'd installed the systems, the NVA figured out that they had systems that sniffed for urine, sweat, explosives, etc. Suddenly the U.S. began detecting massive troop movements through pretty random areas of the jungle. When they sent teams to investigate, they found buckets of stale piss nailed to trees...
This system was held up as a classic example of government waste: multibillion dollar system defeated by buckets of piss.
I'm a pilot - fuel guages are notoriously unreliable on airplanes which is why we manually double check the fuel level before takeoff via mechanical means (i.e. dipstick). I find it incredibly difficult to believe that they simply trusted the fuel guages and didn't confirm the number via any other method.
Extra fuel is not a problem for landing - you just dump it overboard at 10,000 feet before you descend to land. This is standard operating procedure on the boeing 747 - it isn't certified to land at a full fuel+passenger/cargo load (landing gear will collapse) so once it takes off it has to get rid of fuel before it lands again one way or another. So if some dude has a heart attack right after takeoff, they will climb the airplane up and dump the fuel before landing again (they have to be at a certain height to ensure that all the fuel evaporates on its way down and distributes evenly far from populated areas).
Not neccesarily. A very good friend of mine is an aeronautical engineer (works for a large company, but not boeing/airbus sized). He showed me around their offices one time and they were using excel extensively. When I asked him about it, he said that while they do have more advanced tools, excel is quicker, cheaper, and also usually produces reasonably accurate results for most of their CFD (computational fluid dynamics) stuff.
Right, but imagine 3-4 years down the line, wikipedia is getting millions of hits daily... Google is now donating 90% of wikipedia's bandwidth and servers, and suddenly they say we want blah. Wikipedia is then faced with a choice of giving in to google, or of committing effective suicide as they are DDOS'd into oblivion once the servers are removed.
The reason as I percieve it is that he didn't confess to having merely picked up a lost watch. Instead, he lied repeatedly, telling the courts that he bought it at a small jewellers nearby (he couldn't indicate which one during the trial). To a jury, that's highly conspicious...
Yea, but I mostly care about these results because of what we can learn about how these effects affect us. Therefore, human history (all 5000 years of it) is a much more appropriate scale to measure this on, and 10 million years is a fucking eternity...
Yea I know what you're saying... an ILS glideslope is actually 3 degrees, which is actually the slope they teach us to use on standard landings even at the private level (at least roughly 3 degress, its hard to get it w/o an ILS). So actually the manual is whats wrong, as we frequently come in for landing with some (about 1/3) power on. I suppose it is unsafe in that you could have a power failure way out, but I guess that's one of the times when you just count on your equipment (the most critical time is right after takeoff).
The system you describe is ILS (instrument landing system), and is the one currently most widespread. However, the grandparent is correct in that the FAA is currently testing and evaluating the possibility of using GPS for instrument approaches, though no certified GPS approaches exist yet.
As for the glide path being shallow, I'm not entirely sure (I don't have my IFR rating) but I would guess that allows for smoother landings. Also, if you're gliding it in you shouldn't be risking a stall because the best glide speed for most (small planes) is at least 10 knots above the stall speed, and on forced approaches you always use the best glide speed.
"A single hacker messing around with the right financial data can ruin the lives of thousands or millions of people"
Can you point me to a single instance where single cracker's exploits has ruined the lives of even thousands of people? The only thing a cracker can do to cause more than a major inconvenience to people is identity theft, and that's exceedingly hard to scale up without getting caught. Also, while true that crackers can cost companies considerable sums of money, it would take a truely impressive feat to even approach the damage done by Enron et al, and that didn't destabalize the country now did it?
In short, while your fearmongering does have some basis in reality, it doesn't really scale up to the damage you predict.
An engine can pull an aircraft through the air just as well as it can push one - it all depends on where the prop is. If the prop's in front (or on top like a heli), the force it generates is transmitted tensilely through the axle and "pulls" the aircraft through the air. If the prop is behind the aircraft, the force in the axle is compressive and it pushes. That all said, the terms push and pull dont really apply here and are more conceptual than anything. So you can sit on your high horse and claim that propel is the only real term or you can get off it and realize that using these terms doesn't get in the way of understanding the concepts and its a waste of everyones time to be pedantic about them.
Swap user with driver and you prove the author's point very clearly. Perhaps "without fear of reprisals" is too strong a phrase, but compare to car design. If you look at a car, it would theoretically make sense for a gov't (or a responsible car company) to make cars that can't go faster than the highest speed limit in the country. Do they do this? No. Why not? Because a) users don't like it, and b) sometimes being able to go fast is a safety issue, or the technical methods used to implement the speed governing cause extra safety issues (what was the story about a saturn that lost power steering going down a hill?). Also witness that you can drive the car when the oil's low, even though this may irreparably damage your engine, or do many other things.
Since you brought in aircraft, I may as well chime in there since I'm a pilot. There are a multitude of systems in airplanes that, if used improperly by the crew, can lead at best to a serious incident or at worst a fatal accident. Why do we not engineer aircraft such that these systems can't be used improperly? Because for every possible accident there are real examples where by using the system in an unintended way a pilot saves the day. Take for example the experience of a friend of mine, who was flying along and went to reduce power. Pulls out the throttle and it comes out in his hand, with the engine being left in a full power situation. While not as bad as no-throttle, its seriously impossible to land at full throttle. So she goes back to the airport, establishes an emergency situation, and when all is ready she pulls out the mixture control and cuts off fuel to the engine and executes a forced landing. No fatalities, No injuries, No damage to the aircraft, all in all a good day. But suppose some engineer had thought that he would cut down on accidents by eliminating the chance that a pilot could accidentally turn off his engine in flight (which does occaisionally happen with dire consequences)? The situation could have been a lot worse.
This post has grown a lot longer than I intended it to be, but I hope my point has been made. As you said yourself, use comes with some responsibility. At certain point IMO it is more important that someone who knows what they're doing be able to do what they want.
Um, yea, your phone uses 1.53 watts (this is probably when it is close to a cell, when it transmits @ ~0.6W, further away, modern phones scale up their power up to ~3W). Even so, the turbine assuredly does not run at 100% efficiency, and therefore a lot of heat will escape in the exhaust gasses. If we consider 20% efficiency (equivalent to many car engines) even at low power, that means that 4x1.53W= >6 watts will be dissipated in the exhaust gasses. 6 watts is actually a fair bit of heat, especially when its contained in an insulated enclosure (your pocket).
For reference, the rocket that blew up on the pad was a prototype R-16 ICBM (later used in the space program too). You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_disaster
I don't know about that other one that flipped sideways though.
I hate this misconception - the treaty that is constantly referred to only bans WMD in space (though it was originally written with only nuclear in mind, many contend that the wording extends its applicability to all WMDs). Conventional weapons are still fine, as evidenced by history: the Soviet Salyut space station had a 20mm automatic cannon on it which they tested in space. As well, the escape Soyuz on board the ISS contains a.22 pistol in case it lands in the wilderness (this was suggested by the russians because an older soviet soyuz mission had problems when the cosmonauts were unable to leave the capsul until the recovery team arrived several hours later because wolves surrounded the landing site).
I'm sure there are other examples of weapons in space - the point being that only nukes and WMDs are prohibited.
P.S. As pointed out before on/., the only two countries to sign that treaty were the US and the USSR, one of which no longer exists - does the treaty still have force?
Re:Size matters when it comes to Webmail
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The Webmail Wars
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· Score: 1
Exactly. Compare to Yahoo which immediatly upgraded EVERYONE to 100mb when Gmail came out. Saying "oh you can pay for it, or you can wait because it will happen in the future" doesn't cut it because other services are doing it *NOW* for free.
You are forgetting Canada, it has massive deposits of uranium. In fact all the fissile material used in the manhatten project and for several decades after the war came from canada.
Interesting, considering that if Von Moltke had actually listened to his own advice and had been willing to add a little flexibility to his plans, WWI might have never happened, or at the least have been relegated to only the soviet front.
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its only used when its needed in bad weather, otherwise the pilots land them normally
The Canadian Navy has pioneered a system similar to RAST for their operations in the North Atlantic. They still fly ancient sea king helicopters on tiny frigates that pitch all over the place, but they can land in higher seas than anyone else. They lower a steel cable to the deck, where is is secured to a winch. The helicopter hovers over the landing spot, trying to get into position. A ship-based crew judges when the timing is perfect and activates the winch. It slams the helo on to the deck pretty much instantaneously. The landing is hard, but it works. The only problem they have with it is that our oldest sea kings still have vacuum tube avionics, and when they perform this manouvre the shock of landing breaks every single tube on the bird.
Depends - older airliners and small planes would definately have a problem, though I'd be surprised if they couldn't shake the balloon with some (extreme) manouvers. Newer airliners are capable of a Class C Instrument approach (uses DGPS) - they can touch down and brake (but not taxi) on instruments alone. So after they landed someone would have to come out and pull the balloon off the windshield.
It's pretty much exclusively for drill and dress parades. Seriously, I have friends in Canadian Forces recce units, and they train about 2-6 hours a year with bayonets, and only right before they have a big parade like for rememberance day, canada day, or this year, VE day.
This is actually true. Several months after they'd installed the systems, the NVA figured out that they had systems that sniffed for urine, sweat, explosives, etc. Suddenly the U.S. began detecting massive troop movements through pretty random areas of the jungle. When they sent teams to investigate, they found buckets of stale piss nailed to trees...
This system was held up as a classic example of government waste: multibillion dollar system defeated by buckets of piss.
Uh - no... It might be very cold, but it's also extremely low pressure, so actually the pee boils off into a gas.
I'm a pilot - fuel guages are notoriously unreliable on airplanes which is why we manually double check the fuel level before takeoff via mechanical means (i.e. dipstick). I find it incredibly difficult to believe that they simply trusted the fuel guages and didn't confirm the number via any other method.
Extra fuel is not a problem for landing - you just dump it overboard at 10,000 feet before you descend to land. This is standard operating procedure on the boeing 747 - it isn't certified to land at a full fuel+passenger/cargo load (landing gear will collapse) so once it takes off it has to get rid of fuel before it lands again one way or another. So if some dude has a heart attack right after takeoff, they will climb the airplane up and dump the fuel before landing again (they have to be at a certain height to ensure that all the fuel evaporates on its way down and distributes evenly far from populated areas).
Not neccesarily. A very good friend of mine is an aeronautical engineer (works for a large company, but not boeing/airbus sized). He showed me around their offices one time and they were using excel extensively. When I asked him about it, he said that while they do have more advanced tools, excel is quicker, cheaper, and also usually produces reasonably accurate results for most of their CFD (computational fluid dynamics) stuff.
Right, but imagine 3-4 years down the line, wikipedia is getting millions of hits daily... Google is now donating 90% of wikipedia's bandwidth and servers, and suddenly they say we want blah. Wikipedia is then faced with a choice of giving in to google, or of committing effective suicide as they are DDOS'd into oblivion once the servers are removed.
When was the last time you couldn't see far because a sun flare exploded and doused our satellites with radiation? It happens...
The reason as I percieve it is that he didn't confess to having merely picked up a lost watch. Instead, he lied repeatedly, telling the courts that he bought it at a small jewellers nearby (he couldn't indicate which one during the trial). To a jury, that's highly conspicious...
Yea, but I mostly care about these results because of what we can learn about how these effects affect us. Therefore, human history (all 5000 years of it) is a much more appropriate scale to measure this on, and 10 million years is a fucking eternity...
Yea I know what you're saying... an ILS glideslope is actually 3 degrees, which is actually the slope they teach us to use on standard landings even at the private level (at least roughly 3 degress, its hard to get it w/o an ILS). So actually the manual is whats wrong, as we frequently come in for landing with some (about 1/3) power on. I suppose it is unsafe in that you could have a power failure way out, but I guess that's one of the times when you just count on your equipment (the most critical time is right after takeoff).
The system you describe is ILS (instrument landing system), and is the one currently most widespread. However, the grandparent is correct in that the FAA is currently testing and evaluating the possibility of using GPS for instrument approaches, though no certified GPS approaches exist yet.
As for the glide path being shallow, I'm not entirely sure (I don't have my IFR rating) but I would guess that allows for smoother landings. Also, if you're gliding it in you shouldn't be risking a stall because the best glide speed for most (small planes) is at least 10 knots above the stall speed, and on forced approaches you always use the best glide speed.
And yes, IAAP.
"A single hacker messing around with the right financial data can ruin the lives of thousands or millions of people"
Can you point me to a single instance where single cracker's exploits has ruined the lives of even thousands of people? The only thing a cracker can do to cause more than a major inconvenience to people is identity theft, and that's exceedingly hard to scale up without getting caught. Also, while true that crackers can cost companies considerable sums of money, it would take a truely impressive feat to even approach the damage done by Enron et al, and that didn't destabalize the country now did it?
In short, while your fearmongering does have some basis in reality, it doesn't really scale up to the damage you predict.
Heh, thats probably coming from sollog's site http://www.wikipediasucks.com/.
Go look at it, it's pretty funny.
An engine can pull an aircraft through the air just as well as it can push one - it all depends on where the prop is. If the prop's in front (or on top like a heli), the force it generates is transmitted tensilely through the axle and "pulls" the aircraft through the air. If the prop is behind the aircraft, the force in the axle is compressive and it pushes. That all said, the terms push and pull dont really apply here and are more conceptual than anything. So you can sit on your high horse and claim that propel is the only real term or you can get off it and realize that using these terms doesn't get in the way of understanding the concepts and its a waste of everyones time to be pedantic about them.
Swap user with driver and you prove the author's point very clearly. Perhaps "without fear of reprisals" is too strong a phrase, but compare to car design. If you look at a car, it would theoretically make sense for a gov't (or a responsible car company) to make cars that can't go faster than the highest speed limit in the country. Do they do this? No. Why not? Because a) users don't like it, and b) sometimes being able to go fast is a safety issue, or the technical methods used to implement the speed governing cause extra safety issues (what was the story about a saturn that lost power steering going down a hill?). Also witness that you can drive the car when the oil's low, even though this may irreparably damage your engine, or do many other things.
Since you brought in aircraft, I may as well chime in there since I'm a pilot. There are a multitude of systems in airplanes that, if used improperly by the crew, can lead at best to a serious incident or at worst a fatal accident. Why do we not engineer aircraft such that these systems can't be used improperly? Because for every possible accident there are real examples where by using the system in an unintended way a pilot saves the day. Take for example the experience of a friend of mine, who was flying along and went to reduce power. Pulls out the throttle and it comes out in his hand, with the engine being left in a full power situation. While not as bad as no-throttle, its seriously impossible to land at full throttle. So she goes back to the airport, establishes an emergency situation, and when all is ready she pulls out the mixture control and cuts off fuel to the engine and executes a forced landing. No fatalities, No injuries, No damage to the aircraft, all in all a good day. But suppose some engineer had thought that he would cut down on accidents by eliminating the chance that a pilot could accidentally turn off his engine in flight (which does occaisionally happen with dire consequences)? The situation could have been a lot worse.
This post has grown a lot longer than I intended it to be, but I hope my point has been made. As you said yourself, use comes with some responsibility. At certain point IMO it is more important that someone who knows what they're doing be able to do what they want.
Um, yea, your phone uses 1.53 watts (this is probably when it is close to a cell, when it transmits @ ~0.6W, further away, modern phones scale up their power up to ~3W). Even so, the turbine assuredly does not run at 100% efficiency, and therefore a lot of heat will escape in the exhaust gasses. If we consider 20% efficiency (equivalent to many car engines) even at low power, that means that 4x1.53W= >6 watts will be dissipated in the exhaust gasses. 6 watts is actually a fair bit of heat, especially when its contained in an insulated enclosure (your pocket).
For reference, the rocket that blew up on the pad was a prototype R-16 ICBM (later used in the space program too). You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_disaster
I don't know about that other one that flipped sideways though.
I hate this misconception - the treaty that is constantly referred to only bans WMD in space (though it was originally written with only nuclear in mind, many contend that the wording extends its applicability to all WMDs). Conventional weapons are still fine, as evidenced by history: the Soviet Salyut space station had a 20mm automatic cannon on it which they tested in space. As well, the escape Soyuz on board the ISS contains a .22 pistol in case it lands in the wilderness (this was suggested by the russians because an older soviet soyuz mission had problems when the cosmonauts were unable to leave the capsul until the recovery team arrived several hours later because wolves surrounded the landing site).
/., the only two countries to sign that treaty were the US and the USSR, one of which no longer exists - does the treaty still have force?
I'm sure there are other examples of weapons in space - the point being that only nukes and WMDs are prohibited.
P.S. As pointed out before on
Exactly. Compare to Yahoo which immediatly upgraded EVERYONE to 100mb when Gmail came out. Saying "oh you can pay for it, or you can wait because it will happen in the future" doesn't cut it because other services are doing it *NOW* for free.
You are forgetting Canada, it has massive deposits of uranium. In fact all the fissile material used in the manhatten project and for several decades after the war came from canada.
Interesting, considering that if Von Moltke had actually listened to his own advice and had been willing to add a little flexibility to his plans, WWI might have never happened, or at the least have been relegated to only the soviet front.