Well... if you read TFA (or actually the first TFA linked), it is clearly written: In a report to be presented to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on Tuesday, investigators concluded that the primary cause of the failure was "a programming error which led to a simultaneous reboot of two working channels of an onboard computer [...] Likewise, cosmic rays and/or defective electronics are not the leading suspects behind Phobos-Grunt’s demise.
The summary is clearly bolting together two contradicting reports.
We are not even yet at the predicted maximum of the solar cycle. Such coronal mass ejections will probably get more and more frequent until we get to the solar maximum. Now do not get me wrong, I like solar flares as much as anybody here, but we shouldn't really report bursts that miss Earth... or else, we are going to hear about them very often in the near future !
Come on, words have several meanings depending on the circumstances. You will find this definition even in the Merriam-Webster.
Likewise, a hot dog is not a baked puppy. Or at least, I do sincerely hope so.
If you are interested in such matters, you will follow the Space Weather Prediction Center site. Here is their latest advisory:
SWPC Forecasters have determined that the CME from NOAA Region 1402 near disk center yesterday will likely pass above (north) of Earth. This glancing blow will cause just G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm activity. Look for the first signs of it around 1800Z (1:00 pm EST) on Sunday, January 22, with the bulk of the disturbance to occur Monday, January 23. Watch here for updates.
1. Cory Doctorow. It wasn't his best book, but wasn't too bad either, and did give one food for thought. Almost required reading for this topic; it's available at your local bookstore, or for free at BoingBoing.
I loved some other books from Cory Doctorow, but I honestly thought this one was not worth the... oh well, it was free, so I cannot complain. But I would not really recommend it. I thought that the only thing interesting about the book was its setting - otherwise, it's just quite a boring story, with forgettable characters and a surprising (but not particularly enjoyable) lemon scene at the middle. The books starts up nicely, but really winds down afterwards, up to its end which is quite a grind. Of course, this is only my opinion - you are very well entitled to have another one.
You got to put this into perspective. It's not much worse than having a common bank account, or kids: in case of breakup, it can go horribly wrong. But the bottom line is that even in case of breakup, you trust the other one not to act like a total ass.
Of course here, we are talking about teenagers, so the problem is a bit different - in which relationships are much shorter and more passionate. The chances of the shit hitting the fan increases by orders of magnitude.
democratic
adjective
1.pertaining to or of the nature of democracy or a democracy.
2.pertaining to or characterized by the principle of political or social equality for all: democratic treatment. 3.advocating or upholding democracy.
Come on, you know well that words have many nuances. Here, the process is advocating democracy by showing that the voice of common people can be heard by the government and by the country at large.:)
I do not want to sound naive but... even if I'm only a very occasional role-playing game player, I never really had trouble to find people to play with. If you do not know any people who play D&D, why don't you try to introduce some of your friends to role-playing ? Not every of them will like it, but I am sure that some of them will find the idea appealing. Do not be afraid to play with an all-beginner group, it can be a lot of fun - even if you feel that you are not very experienced in role-playing. Every group has a different style of playing.
I do not want to sound naive, but... even if I am just a very occasional RPG player, I never really had trouble to find people to play with. If you do not know anybody who plays D&D, why don't you try to introduce your friends to role-playing ? Not every of them will like this, but I am sure some of them will find role-playing appealing. Do not fear playing with an all-beginner group - it can be a lot of fun, even if you are not very experienced in role playing yourself.
The critical issue that arises from the BEA interim reports is that nobody in the cockpit was aware that they were in a stall, even if the stall alarm sounded many times and the airspeed measurements came back back rather quickly. While I totally agree that feedback from the sticks could have helped in identifying the stall condition, it remains questionable if this could have saved the aircraft.
There is a more fundamental question here: in an emergency situation such as this one, why did the crew chose to discard most of the information that was given to them by the plane ? As soon as the initial issue was identified (unreliable airspeed), it seems that almost every information provided by the plane was considered bogus and not trustworthy anymore.
The inspectors from BEA have a assembled a "human factors" panel to try to understand the reactions of the pilots. Of course, human-machine interface is probably at the centre of the problem, but the issue seems a lot deeper than just stick feedback.
It's a design trade-off. Having non-coupled sticks also offers advantages in other critical situations: see for instance the Air India IX-212 incident that happened on a Boeing 737 with coupled control yokes. The pilot flying was kind of inexperienced, and somehow managed to get stuck against the control yoke while the commander was out of the cockpit, making the plane enter a dive. When the commander rushed back to his flying seat, he had to struggle and fight with the other pilot for the control of the plane, who was in total panic and kept pushing as strongly as he could against his yoke. As the commander finally managed to pull stronger on his yoke than the other pilot pushed, the flight did not end in catastrophe. But it was still quite a scary incident.
In these situations, you can see the advantages of the Airbus design, with uncoupled sticks and a priority override button. In the AF447 crash, you can see its disadvantages.
First, ballots sometimes stick to the bottom of ballot boxes when the boxes are overturned, and fail to be counted
Can this really happen ? Where I vote, every vote is paper-based - but one of the things checked by the people doing the counting is that the number of registered voters matches with the number of ballots. Furthermore, it is quite easy to see any ballot sticking to the bottom since the ballot boxes are transparent. Of course, double errors can happen, but this does not seem as a big deal as the summary presents it.
Engineering is just a job and a set of skills, not a philosophy. You will find all kinds of different people in engineering.
Next on slashdot: are scientists natural atheists or religious ?
We all agree that launching space vehicles is hard. But yes, the Russian could do better, because they are among the best designers of launch vehicles, if not THE best. Something very wrong is currently happening within the Russian space industry, and it's quite a disturbing sight.
This does not sound like a right schedule - as the Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission was put on hold recently. Having worked a bit on it, the expected level of radiation was very high, even when compared to Juno. It follows on a long tradition of missions to Europe being cancelled (see the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter which was cancelled in 2005). Fans of Arthur C. Clarke will see a trend there. The Laplace mission (from ESA) which is aiming for Ganymede is currently trying to pick on bits of JEO science targets by adding flybys of Europe to the original mission plan - we will see how far it goes.
Interestingly, high-speed rail is actually relatively tolerant to level variations, because the trains have a very high power to weight ratio. In France, the spec. is ~3.5% (35mm/m) for TGV railroads.
It's actually a bit similar...
As long as you have a TV, you pay for the national channels, even if you do not watch them.
As long as you have internet access, the ISP will pay to help national music production, even if you do not listen to music on the internet (or to French music at all).
Eris might not be that big after all. The first estimation of its size were made according to its mass, but it seems that this dwarf planet could have a higher density than Pluto.
Slashdot Mirror
Well... if you read TFA (or actually the first TFA linked), it is clearly written:
In a report to be presented to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on Tuesday, investigators concluded that the primary cause of the failure was "a programming error which led to a simultaneous reboot of two working channels of an onboard computer [...] Likewise, cosmic rays and/or defective electronics are not the leading suspects behind Phobos-Grunt’s demise.
The summary is clearly bolting together two contradicting reports.
We are not even yet at the predicted maximum of the solar cycle. Such coronal mass ejections will probably get more and more frequent until we get to the solar maximum. Now do not get me wrong, I like solar flares as much as anybody here, but we shouldn't really report bursts that miss Earth... or else, we are going to hear about them very often in the near future !
Come on, words have several meanings depending on the circumstances. You will find this definition even in the Merriam-Webster.
Likewise, a hot dog is not a baked puppy. Or at least, I do sincerely hope so.
If you are interested in such matters, you will follow the Space Weather Prediction Center site. Here is their latest advisory:
SWPC Forecasters have determined that the CME from NOAA Region 1402 near disk center yesterday will likely pass above (north) of Earth. This glancing blow will cause just G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm activity. Look for the first signs of it around 1800Z (1:00 pm EST) on Sunday, January 22, with the bulk of the disturbance to occur Monday, January 23. Watch here for updates.
That's Makers.
1. Cory Doctorow. It wasn't his best book, but wasn't too bad either, and did give one food for thought. Almost required reading for this topic; it's available at your local bookstore, or for free at BoingBoing.
I loved some other books from Cory Doctorow, but I honestly thought this one was not worth the... oh well, it was free, so I cannot complain. But I would not really recommend it. I thought that the only thing interesting about the book was its setting - otherwise, it's just quite a boring story, with forgettable characters and a surprising (but not particularly enjoyable) lemon scene at the middle. The books starts up nicely, but really winds down afterwards, up to its end which is quite a grind. Of course, this is only my opinion - you are very well entitled to have another one.
You got to put this into perspective. It's not much worse than having a common bank account, or kids: in case of breakup, it can go horribly wrong. But the bottom line is that even in case of breakup, you trust the other one not to act like a total ass.
Of course here, we are talking about teenagers, so the problem is a bit different - in which relationships are much shorter and more passionate. The chances of the shit hitting the fan increases by orders of magnitude.
democratic
:)
adjective
1.pertaining to or of the nature of democracy or a democracy.
2.pertaining to or characterized by the principle of political or social equality for all: democratic treatment.
3.advocating or upholding democracy.
Come on, you know well that words have many nuances. Here, the process is advocating democracy by showing that the voice of common people can be heard by the government and by the country at large.
I do not want to sound naive but... even if I'm only a very occasional role-playing game player, I never really had trouble to find people to play with. If you do not know any people who play D&D, why don't you try to introduce some of your friends to role-playing ? Not every of them will like it, but I am sure that some of them will find the idea appealing. Do not be afraid to play with an all-beginner group, it can be a lot of fun - even if you feel that you are not very experienced in role-playing. Every group has a different style of playing.
I do not want to sound naive, but... even if I am just a very occasional RPG player, I never really had trouble to find people to play with. If you do not know anybody who plays D&D, why don't you try to introduce your friends to role-playing ? Not every of them will like this, but I am sure some of them will find role-playing appealing. Do not fear playing with an all-beginner group - it can be a lot of fun, even if you are not very experienced in role playing yourself.
The critical issue that arises from the BEA interim reports is that nobody in the cockpit was aware that they were in a stall, even if the stall alarm sounded many times and the airspeed measurements came back back rather quickly. While I totally agree that feedback from the sticks could have helped in identifying the stall condition, it remains questionable if this could have saved the aircraft.
There is a more fundamental question here: in an emergency situation such as this one, why did the crew chose to discard most of the information that was given to them by the plane ? As soon as the initial issue was identified (unreliable airspeed), it seems that almost every information provided by the plane was considered bogus and not trustworthy anymore.
The inspectors from BEA have a assembled a "human factors" panel to try to understand the reactions of the pilots. Of course, human-machine interface is probably at the centre of the problem, but the issue seems a lot deeper than just stick feedback.
It's a design trade-off. Having non-coupled sticks also offers advantages in other critical situations: see for instance the Air India IX-212 incident that happened on a Boeing 737 with coupled control yokes. The pilot flying was kind of inexperienced, and somehow managed to get stuck against the control yoke while the commander was out of the cockpit, making the plane enter a dive. When the commander rushed back to his flying seat, he had to struggle and fight with the other pilot for the control of the plane, who was in total panic and kept pushing as strongly as he could against his yoke. As the commander finally managed to pull stronger on his yoke than the other pilot pushed, the flight did not end in catastrophe. But it was still quite a scary incident.
In these situations, you can see the advantages of the Airbus design, with uncoupled sticks and a priority override button. In the AF447 crash, you can see its disadvantages.
First, ballots sometimes stick to the bottom of ballot boxes when the boxes are overturned, and fail to be counted
Can this really happen ? Where I vote, every vote is paper-based - but one of the things checked by the people doing the counting is that the number of registered voters matches with the number of ballots. Furthermore, it is quite easy to see any ballot sticking to the bottom since the ballot boxes are transparent. Of course, double errors can happen, but this does not seem as a big deal as the summary presents it.
Engineering is just a job and a set of skills, not a philosophy. You will find all kinds of different people in engineering.
Next on slashdot: are scientists natural atheists or religious ?
You know, it's a perfectly acceptable usage of "Literally". It's a very common hyperbole.
We all agree that launching space vehicles is hard. But yes, the Russian could do better, because they are among the best designers of launch vehicles, if not THE best. Something very wrong is currently happening within the Russian space industry, and it's quite a disturbing sight.
And so does France, with the Fessenheim reactor, which is also 30 years old.
This does not sound like a right schedule - as the Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission was put on hold recently. Having worked a bit on it, the expected level of radiation was very high, even when compared to Juno. It follows on a long tradition of missions to Europe being cancelled (see the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter which was cancelled in 2005). Fans of Arthur C. Clarke will see a trend there. The Laplace mission (from ESA) which is aiming for Ganymede is currently trying to pick on bits of JEO science targets by adding flybys of Europe to the original mission plan - we will see how far it goes.
Interestingly, high-speed rail is actually relatively tolerant to level variations, because the trains have a very high power to weight ratio. In France, the spec. is ~3.5% (35mm/m) for TGV railroads.
It's actually a bit similar...
As long as you have a TV, you pay for the national channels, even if you do not watch them.
As long as you have internet access, the ISP will pay to help national music production, even if you do not listen to music on the internet (or to French music at all).
I don't remember that the Altavista of its time being more prone to return "spam" results than the Google of nowadays (crawling a much bigger web).
... you might have heard about PHARAO, a caesium clock which is planned to fly on the ISS in 2013. Accuracy target is 1E-16.
It's actually an e-reader. The Sony tablets are called Tablet S and Tablet P.
You should check out TenFourFox. Right now, the website is down, but it is a good way to use the newest versions of Firefox on PPC.
Eris might not be that big after all. The first estimation of its size were made according to its mass, but it seems that this dwarf planet could have a higher density than Pluto.