(But beware, telecoms standards are actually physically painful to read... You have been warned.)
I'm currently reading "From GSM to LTE" by Martin Sauter, and I can attest to the fact that you will die a horrible death from acronym overload if you try to memorize even any of the basic level stuff. IAM BSC MSC GMSC AMSC RMSC VMSC eMLPP APDU BCCH PCH LAC MSRN IMSI VLR TRAU A5/1 A5/2 A5/3 FR HR AAAAAAHHHHH!
How quickly would they have found him had they just pinged his cell phone?
Sigh. They don't ping the phone, the phone pings the towers and the cell company provides the data about that to public safety. And they did that. It doesn't give an exact location, and it doesn't say that the person holding the phone is actually missing in a way that required a full-scale search to be started.
It may have had more to do with that they can't immediately investigate as he is an adult.
Arrive home to the iKettle boiled and ready to pour
Having remote controlled heating elements in an unoccupied house or apartment is a recipe for disaster.
How about: walk in the door, flip the switch on the normal pot, kick off the shoes, hang up the coat, turn on the TV, pour a stiff drink, what was the boiling water for again?
Avoid that bitter taste and brew at the right temperature. Choose from 65, 80, 95 and 100â(TM)c
Using water that has sat in the pot all day, losing dissolved gasses and depositing lime for the next pot, getting the bitter taste right back again.
Talk about solving First World problems - geesh.
Especially since many European kitchens already have a hot water heater on-demand and can get almost boiling water right from the tap, if they so choose.
No, living in San Francisco and being stupid kills home ownership.
First, he's living in one of the highest cost of living places in the world. At least in the US.
Second, he's actually paying off his student loans instead of waiting long enough for enough people to be in default that the government just grants amnesty to everyone and the taxpayer foots the full bill. You know it is going to happen sometime, you just have to wait it out.
Yes. Since eating in a cafeteria (or any restaurant) is done in the midst of other people, and showering is done in a locker room which has it's own, shall we say, ambiance, the correct order is "shower then eat". That way you wash off the "ambiance" of living in a truck before sitting down next to other people to eat.
You can call it "cyclical", but the time in between "shower" and "eat" does make a difference.
To initiate a wide-spread search takes a lot of people -- more people than you want to have on your payroll all the time just in case they are needed.
And initiating a full-scale search for a person who is of-age and not known to be in danger would create a lot of full-scale searches for people who just didn't want to be where they were. We had the owner of a local hot-dog shop just not show up for work one day around here. He was found a few hundred miles away just trying to not be involved with the hot-dog shop anymore. The owner of a car audio store did the same thing about a month prior.
That's why missing person reports don't automatically trigger an all-out search. Not for a college student who just didn't come home. Now, one that is kidnapped from the street, or a dementia patient, or someone who is reported missing in a wilderness area, yes. But a college student who could have easily decided to shack up with someone for the weekend? If you burn out your search volunteers looking for people who just didn't want to be where they were anymore, you'll not have them available when there is someone who really does need to be found.
In general this requires you to have an app running sending out your GPS coordinates to some server that records this info.
Or dial 911. The E911 (enhanced) system includes GPS position data for incoming calls, including wired and cell. This system was put in place specifically to deal with people who call 911 and then don't know where they are so they can't tell the 911 op where to send help.
This is why you are supposed to register an address with your VoIP cell service, so when you call 911 not only will the call be routed to the correct Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) but so help can be sent if you are unable to tell them where it is needed.
Some lost people make the mistake of using the last gasp of battery power calling a friend for help, when they should call 911 and their location will be recorded.
The only way to get a GPS location from a phone is if the phone has the GPS function switched on,
The consumer-available GPS function does not need to be "on" for E911 to get that data.
Pinging a cellphone means setting up a portable cellphone tower.
No, pinging a cellphone doesn't mean setting up a portable cellphone tower. "Pinging" is the what the cellphone companies call the process a cellphone goes through trying to register with any available cellphone tower (almost always fixed). It's an analogy for the "ping" command in unix.
There are established procedures for public safety agencies to request and obtain the cellphone data. All it takes is a signed affidavit attesting that the data is necessary for safety of life -- which this clearly was. One of the first questions in the lost person interview is "does he own a cellphone and what's the number?"
With one cell tower hearing the ping, you can get a direction (from the phased array antennas they use on a tower) and an approximate distance (from the signal strength.) Both are recorded for every ping.
From two or more towers you can use either triangulation (multiple bearings to the same ping) or time-of-arrival differences to measure the relative distances. (The latter is the basis for GPS.)
I've been involved with searches where the ping has resulted in locating the subject within a few hundred yards. One such search didn't result in a find right away because the subjects were trying to hide and heard the aircraft that was looking for them. They came out a few days later when they got hungry.
I am asking that just one of them has gone through the Gordon West / W5YI book on the GROL+Radar and has taken the test....
What you really need is assurance that at least one person understands how to protect the radar and has the authority to get changes in the driver.
The GROL with ship radar license offers no such assurance. "Going through the book" is a good way of passing the test, but is no guarantee that the person who passes the test really understands anything on it, much less understands anything about something the test doesn't cover in any way.
You just need someone with the FCC license to *certify* that the driver complies with existing laws before you can use/deploy devices utilizing those driver.
If all you want is someone "with the FCC license", then you might as well make it the Restricted Radiotelephone Operator's Permit, because that license requires just as much technical background relevant to software development and WiFi as the GROL (even with a ship radar endorsement) has. If you're going to claim that someone with a GROL can learn what he needs to do the job right, well, so can someone with the RROP.
No license is required to operate within these bands, making the proposal that a person holding a technical license approve router firmware an exception to current policy.
You are wrong. The fact that a specific use of a frequency does not require a license does not mean that the devices used there have no regulatory limitations or oversight.
For example, the FRS is license-free but you cannot legally use a radio that you put together yourself on those frequencies, nor can you modify a radio that has been certified for FRS and use it there.
As far as I can tell, the FAA is violating FCC rules by operating their radar within these bands.
The FAA, as a federal agency, is not subject to FCC rules. They operate under the auspices of the NTIA. But since there frequencies are allocated for this use and the transmitters are certified for use there, they are not breaking either FCC or NTIA regulations by using them.
I think the idea was to have any one of such license holders review and approve such firmware mods.
Anyone who gets the Gordon West / W5YI book on the GROL+Radar.
The comment you just made, in reply to the one before that, says that you intend that anyone who buys a book on the subject will be certified to approve WiFi software.
I'm sure you didn't really mean that, because if you did then you are crazy.
A friend of mine just got the license that's a pre-requestite for GROL, it wasn't cheap...but he's working on his GROL.
Your friend is blowing smoke because there is no license that is a prerequisite for the GROL. You don't need to pass (or even take) a class, you don't need to have a high school diploma even. You need the following three things to get your GROL:
be a legal resident of (or otherwise eligible for employment in) the United States; and
be able to receive and transmit spoken messages in English; and
pass a written and/or telegraphy examination(s) as described below under Examinations.
There is no telegraphy requirement for the GROL, only two written elements (1 and 3), and element 8 for the ship radar endorsement.
You can walk into a testing center with the correct amount of money and take the tests. As for how expensive those tests are, you can look here for a list of license examination managers and the fees they charge. I don't see any of them except the last one that charges more than $100 for the three elements necessary to obtain a GROL with ship radar endorsement. Some of them offer online testing on a walk-in basis daily.
Granted, you have to be a hundred feet above ground level to be relevant,
I'm sorry, what? Do you understand how radio works?
You may have to be 100 feet above ground before you can create a false target or inject false data. You can absolutely interfere with a radar system if you simply transmit at significant power levels near one. If you cause the receiver to desense so it does not receive the echos it requires to work, then you've interfered with it.
Remember the microwave oven(s) at the National Radio Observatory in West Virginia that were creating fake signals? They weren't located millions of miles out in space where the telescopes were looking, they were in a building on the ground a few hundred feet away. Or the ground-based amateur systems in the 70cm band that were interfering with Air Force OTH radar in California? Those didn't need to be a hundred feet above ground, either.
This makes the most sense of all the proposals I've seen.
Having a GROL with a ship radar endorsement gives someone absolutely NO special training in how to deal with either WiFi or the software that runs it. If you look here, you'll see what elements you need to pass to get a GROL and the ship radar endorsement (1,3, and 8), and here are links to the question pools from which the exams are created. Look for yourself and see how much relevant knowledge is required for the task Bruce is suggesting they do.
It is patently ridiculous to think a GROL holder will understand what to look for in the software so he can approve it.
You've reminded me that I've had the same kind of experience while riding in someone else's car. Multi-lane major highway leaving Denver at close to rush hour. Stop and go traffic. We stopped, and so did the engine. We were in the right hand lane just at the end of an on-ramp merge.
But I've never had an aircraft engine just stop on me, even when the electrical system was shut off completely. Domo arrigato, Mr. Magneto.
Yes, it is... when is the last time your car's engine just quit?
You were asking about why magnetos (an ancient technology) were used in aircraft engines, not why they weren't used in cars. But the answer is just a few months ago, when the battery failed and because there was no electrical power the spark plugs could not fire.
But the correct question is "when is the last time you had a complete electrical failure in an aircraft?" Fortunately for my piloting, never. But I would be a fool to ignore the NTSB reports and other pilot's reports of it happening. Even those where the complete electrical system had not failed, but where there was a burning electronics smell while in flight and the system was shut off to prevent a catastrophic fire. So, even the relatively simple thing of an aircraft electrical system is not failure-proof, nor are the magnetos themselves, but magnetos do not fail when the power goes out as would an electronic fuel injection system.
That makes trying to use a failure-prone aviation autopilot system as an example of why automobiles will have perfect ones pretty silly. There are so many failure modes for aviation autopilots that there have to be a lot of ways of turning it off immediately, and it is even prohibited for use in certain places because a failure could become fatal quickly. I know, let's put the same think in all of our cars and make our lives depend on them making perfect decisions for us every time! That's the ticket!
I had the electrical system completely fail on me in 2005 while flying with a student,
So why the hell are you arguing with me when I tell you why aircraft engines have magnetos?
The irony is that the autopilot in the Global Hawk is MUCH more advanced than the one in a 747, yet there is no one on board.
"Advanced" doesn't necessarily mean "safer", and you've already admitted that there have been Global Hawk crashes. Even so, using the Global Hawk autopilot as an argument for how great automobile autopilots will be is just as wrong. Different systems, different cost, different operating environments, and even the easier case of a low-density operating environment isn't that perfect.
and even then people wouldn't get into a 747 without pilots because of "fear".
If you are a pilot who has any experience with aviation autopilots and you do not consider that fear to be justified, then I question your experience. Yes, I remember the claims you made about your experience. Therefore, I have to think you are deliberately under-representing the failures of aviation autopilots in order to promote automotive ones.
There will be enough cars to do so and make it work well.
Multiple a failure-capable system by a million and it will simply fail a million times more often, not a million times less often. And until the system has been proven in use, at volume, I know too much about history to trust that the system as a whole will be as safe as acolytes promise us.
Keep in mind that your C182 that you fly still uses magnetos to fire the spark, those are only about 80 years old at this point. The fuel-injection technology is from the 70s, it is ancient.
Yes, I know there are so many other wonderful new shiny things being done in automotive engines. Isn't it great? But I also know that magnetos are a simple device that don't require an electrical system to operate. I can have a complete electrical system failure in an airplane and the engine keeps running! I like that. Having an electronic fuel-injection system with computer control of mixture and timing -- computer "blue screen of death" takes on a whole new and more serious meaning.
But again, simple autopilots in simple airplanes failing so often that teaching people how to deal with failures is more important than teaching them how to deal with proper operation kinda shows that using aviation autopilots as support for how great automobile ones will be is silly.
When you can answer the question as to why that is,
Just did.
then you'll understand why most airplanes have such basic autopilots that haven't really been improved on in many decades.
I already understand that, and I already understand that using them as an example of how things will be perfect on the ground is ridiculous. But you were promoting how advanced those same autopilots are when you talked about autoland, so I'm confused about what you actually think.
I understand that Silicon Dust is working on a product that will do the same thing as Media Center (including DVRing protected Cable Card content).
Let's hope that it isn't as much of a system pig as View is. I have two systems talking to a HDHomeRun with a three tuner CableCard. I could run three instances of QuickView to watch three things at once, but on the same systems I cannot run even one View without image breakup.
And if it has the same unintuitive counterproductive UI that View has, it will be DOA.
I have never found difficulty detecting humans in a crowd. OK, nit picking, but I have a point.
He didn't write that it was a difficult problem for human beings, he wrote that it is an important problem in the context of computer vision. What you find difficult or easy can be exactly the opposite for computer vision, and whether a problem is important to solve or not has nothing to do with how easy it is for you to do it manually.
For example, I have a current remote sensing problem that is important for us to solve. It is easy for a human being to look at the data and determine the answer. Unfortunately, I have neither the money nor the time to hire people to look at the hundreds of thousands of images to do the easy job, so I have to come up with a way of getting the computer to at least winnow that set down to a manageable number so humans can do the rest.
Now, you may not consider this an important problem because you don't care, but it is important to the people who need to use the data. Just like it is important for the computer monitoring the camera overlooking the park to be able to signal to the human operators that there is a crowd of greater than the defined size gathering there and they might need to do something, even if that "something" is as simple as having the porta-potty people drop off a few more.
Slashdot Mirror
(But beware, telecoms standards are actually physically painful to read... You have been warned.)
I'm currently reading "From GSM to LTE" by Martin Sauter, and I can attest to the fact that you will die a horrible death from acronym overload if you try to memorize even any of the basic level stuff. IAM BSC MSC GMSC AMSC RMSC VMSC eMLPP APDU BCCH PCH LAC MSRN IMSI VLR TRAU A5/1 A5/2 A5/3 FR HR AAAAAAHHHHH!
How quickly would they have found him had they just pinged his cell phone?
Sigh. They don't ping the phone, the phone pings the towers and the cell company provides the data about that to public safety. And they did that. It doesn't give an exact location, and it doesn't say that the person holding the phone is actually missing in a way that required a full-scale search to be started.
It may have had more to do with that they can't immediately investigate as he is an adult.
And not obviously in need of being found.
Arrive home to the iKettle boiled and ready to pour
Having remote controlled heating elements in an unoccupied house or apartment is a recipe for disaster.
How about: walk in the door, flip the switch on the normal pot, kick off the shoes, hang up the coat, turn on the TV, pour a stiff drink, what was the boiling water for again?
Avoid that bitter taste and brew at the right temperature. Choose from 65, 80, 95 and 100â(TM)c
Using water that has sat in the pot all day, losing dissolved gasses and depositing lime for the next pot, getting the bitter taste right back again.
Talk about solving First World problems - geesh.
Especially since many European kitchens already have a hot water heater on-demand and can get almost boiling water right from the tap, if they so choose.
If Google employees can't afford rent, how can teachers, nurses, and janitors?
And yet enough people in SF can afford rent so that the prices do not drop from over-supply and lack of demand.
Teachers, nurses, and janitors live outside the city and commute.
I went on a job interview there thirty years ago, and it was already nuts for housing prices.
student loans kill home ownership
No, living in San Francisco and being stupid kills home ownership.
First, he's living in one of the highest cost of living places in the world. At least in the US.
Second, he's actually paying off his student loans instead of waiting long enough for enough people to be in default that the government just grants amnesty to everyone and the taxpayer foots the full bill. You know it is going to happen sometime, you just have to wait it out.
Is there a particular order which is correct?
Yes. Since eating in a cafeteria (or any restaurant) is done in the midst of other people, and showering is done in a locker room which has it's own, shall we say, ambiance, the correct order is "shower then eat". That way you wash off the "ambiance" of living in a truck before sitting down next to other people to eat.
You can call it "cyclical", but the time in between "shower" and "eat" does make a difference.
That is how *traditional* economies work. If you made the simple change of promoting a distributed work force ...
And initiating a full-scale search for a person who is of-age and not known to be in danger would create a lot of full-scale searches for people who just didn't want to be where they were. We had the owner of a local hot-dog shop just not show up for work one day around here. He was found a few hundred miles away just trying to not be involved with the hot-dog shop anymore. The owner of a car audio store did the same thing about a month prior.
That's why missing person reports don't automatically trigger an all-out search. Not for a college student who just didn't come home. Now, one that is kidnapped from the street, or a dementia patient, or someone who is reported missing in a wilderness area, yes. But a college student who could have easily decided to shack up with someone for the weekend? If you burn out your search volunteers looking for people who just didn't want to be where they were anymore, you'll not have them available when there is someone who really does need to be found.
In general this requires you to have an app running sending out your GPS coordinates to some server that records this info.
Or dial 911. The E911 (enhanced) system includes GPS position data for incoming calls, including wired and cell. This system was put in place specifically to deal with people who call 911 and then don't know where they are so they can't tell the 911 op where to send help.
This is why you are supposed to register an address with your VoIP cell service, so when you call 911 not only will the call be routed to the correct Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) but so help can be sent if you are unable to tell them where it is needed.
Some lost people make the mistake of using the last gasp of battery power calling a friend for help, when they should call 911 and their location will be recorded.
The only way to get a GPS location from a phone is if the phone has the GPS function switched on,
The consumer-available GPS function does not need to be "on" for E911 to get that data.
Pinging a cellphone means setting up a portable cellphone tower.
No, pinging a cellphone doesn't mean setting up a portable cellphone tower. "Pinging" is the what the cellphone companies call the process a cellphone goes through trying to register with any available cellphone tower (almost always fixed). It's an analogy for the "ping" command in unix.
There are established procedures for public safety agencies to request and obtain the cellphone data. All it takes is a signed affidavit attesting that the data is necessary for safety of life -- which this clearly was. One of the first questions in the lost person interview is "does he own a cellphone and what's the number?"
With one cell tower hearing the ping, you can get a direction (from the phased array antennas they use on a tower) and an approximate distance (from the signal strength.) Both are recorded for every ping.
From two or more towers you can use either triangulation (multiple bearings to the same ping) or time-of-arrival differences to measure the relative distances. (The latter is the basis for GPS.)
I've been involved with searches where the ping has resulted in locating the subject within a few hundred yards. One such search didn't result in a find right away because the subjects were trying to hide and heard the aircraft that was looking for them. They came out a few days later when they got hungry.
To what frequency set should a transmitter designed for different countries with different spectrum allocations be locked?
To the frequencies appropriate for the country where the transmitter is operated. Of course. I would have thought that was an obvious answer.
You have to study and pass the test. But it is not very hard.
I know that. What I was pointing out was that you didn't say anything about getting the GROL in the comment I replied to, only buying the book.
I am asking that just one of them has gone through the Gordon West / W5YI book on the GROL+Radar and has taken the test. ...
What you really need is assurance that at least one person understands how to protect the radar and has the authority to get changes in the driver.
The GROL with ship radar license offers no such assurance. "Going through the book" is a good way of passing the test, but is no guarantee that the person who passes the test really understands anything on it, much less understands anything about something the test doesn't cover in any way.
You just need someone with the FCC license to *certify* that the driver complies with existing laws before you can use/deploy devices utilizing those driver.
If all you want is someone "with the FCC license", then you might as well make it the Restricted Radiotelephone Operator's Permit, because that license requires just as much technical background relevant to software development and WiFi as the GROL (even with a ship radar endorsement) has. If you're going to claim that someone with a GROL can learn what he needs to do the job right, well, so can someone with the RROP.
No license is required to operate within these bands, making the proposal that a person holding a technical license approve router firmware an exception to current policy.
You are wrong. The fact that a specific use of a frequency does not require a license does not mean that the devices used there have no regulatory limitations or oversight.
For example, the FRS is license-free but you cannot legally use a radio that you put together yourself on those frequencies, nor can you modify a radio that has been certified for FRS and use it there.
As far as I can tell, the FAA is violating FCC rules by operating their radar within these bands.
The FAA, as a federal agency, is not subject to FCC rules. They operate under the auspices of the NTIA. But since there frequencies are allocated for this use and the transmitters are certified for use there, they are not breaking either FCC or NTIA regulations by using them.
I think the idea was to have any one of such license holders review and approve such firmware mods.
Anyone who gets the Gordon West / W5YI book on the GROL+Radar.
The comment you just made, in reply to the one before that, says that you intend that anyone who buys a book on the subject will be certified to approve WiFi software.
I'm sure you didn't really mean that, because if you did then you are crazy.
A friend of mine just got the license that's a pre-requestite for GROL, it wasn't cheap...but he's working on his GROL.
Your friend is blowing smoke because there is no license that is a prerequisite for the GROL. You don't need to pass (or even take) a class, you don't need to have a high school diploma even. You need the following three things to get your GROL:
There is no telegraphy requirement for the GROL, only two written elements (1 and 3), and element 8 for the ship radar endorsement.
You can walk into a testing center with the correct amount of money and take the tests. As for how expensive those tests are, you can look here for a list of license examination managers and the fees they charge. I don't see any of them except the last one that charges more than $100 for the three elements necessary to obtain a GROL with ship radar endorsement. Some of them offer online testing on a walk-in basis daily.
The current test fee for Armature Radio tests administered by a VEC is EXACTLY $15. Not a penny more or less is allowed.
You are wrong. The fee is not set by the FCC. The FCC has deregulated the testing fee, as covered here.
The ARRL VEC currently has a $15 testing fee. The Laurel VEC teams charge zero. Nada. Zip. Nothing. I've heard that other VEC teams charge just $5.
Granted, you have to be a hundred feet above ground level to be relevant,
I'm sorry, what? Do you understand how radio works?
You may have to be 100 feet above ground before you can create a false target or inject false data. You can absolutely interfere with a radar system if you simply transmit at significant power levels near one. If you cause the receiver to desense so it does not receive the echos it requires to work, then you've interfered with it.
Remember the microwave oven(s) at the National Radio Observatory in West Virginia that were creating fake signals? They weren't located millions of miles out in space where the telescopes were looking, they were in a building on the ground a few hundred feet away. Or the ground-based amateur systems in the 70cm band that were interfering with Air Force OTH radar in California? Those didn't need to be a hundred feet above ground, either.
This makes the most sense of all the proposals I've seen.
Having a GROL with a ship radar endorsement gives someone absolutely NO special training in how to deal with either WiFi or the software that runs it. If you look here, you'll see what elements you need to pass to get a GROL and the ship radar endorsement (1,3, and 8), and here are links to the question pools from which the exams are created. Look for yourself and see how much relevant knowledge is required for the task Bruce is suggesting they do.
It is patently ridiculous to think a GROL holder will understand what to look for in the software so he can approve it.
But I've never had an aircraft engine just stop on me, even when the electrical system was shut off completely. Domo arrigato, Mr. Magneto.
Yes, it is... when is the last time your car's engine just quit?
You were asking about why magnetos (an ancient technology) were used in aircraft engines, not why they weren't used in cars. But the answer is just a few months ago, when the battery failed and because there was no electrical power the spark plugs could not fire.
But the correct question is "when is the last time you had a complete electrical failure in an aircraft?" Fortunately for my piloting, never. But I would be a fool to ignore the NTSB reports and other pilot's reports of it happening. Even those where the complete electrical system had not failed, but where there was a burning electronics smell while in flight and the system was shut off to prevent a catastrophic fire. So, even the relatively simple thing of an aircraft electrical system is not failure-proof, nor are the magnetos themselves, but magnetos do not fail when the power goes out as would an electronic fuel injection system.
That makes trying to use a failure-prone aviation autopilot system as an example of why automobiles will have perfect ones pretty silly. There are so many failure modes for aviation autopilots that there have to be a lot of ways of turning it off immediately, and it is even prohibited for use in certain places because a failure could become fatal quickly. I know, let's put the same think in all of our cars and make our lives depend on them making perfect decisions for us every time! That's the ticket!
I had the electrical system completely fail on me in 2005 while flying with a student,
So why the hell are you arguing with me when I tell you why aircraft engines have magnetos?
The irony is that the autopilot in the Global Hawk is MUCH more advanced than the one in a 747, yet there is no one on board.
"Advanced" doesn't necessarily mean "safer", and you've already admitted that there have been Global Hawk crashes. Even so, using the Global Hawk autopilot as an argument for how great automobile autopilots will be is just as wrong. Different systems, different cost, different operating environments, and even the easier case of a low-density operating environment isn't that perfect.
and even then people wouldn't get into a 747 without pilots because of "fear".
If you are a pilot who has any experience with aviation autopilots and you do not consider that fear to be justified, then I question your experience. Yes, I remember the claims you made about your experience. Therefore, I have to think you are deliberately under-representing the failures of aviation autopilots in order to promote automotive ones.
There will be enough cars to do so and make it work well.
Multiple a failure-capable system by a million and it will simply fail a million times more often, not a million times less often. And until the system has been proven in use, at volume, I know too much about history to trust that the system as a whole will be as safe as acolytes promise us.
Keep in mind that your C182 that you fly still uses magnetos to fire the spark, those are only about 80 years old at this point. The fuel-injection technology is from the 70s, it is ancient.
Yes, I know there are so many other wonderful new shiny things being done in automotive engines. Isn't it great? But I also know that magnetos are a simple device that don't require an electrical system to operate. I can have a complete electrical system failure in an airplane and the engine keeps running! I like that. Having an electronic fuel-injection system with computer control of mixture and timing -- computer "blue screen of death" takes on a whole new and more serious meaning.
But again, simple autopilots in simple airplanes failing so often that teaching people how to deal with failures is more important than teaching them how to deal with proper operation kinda shows that using aviation autopilots as support for how great automobile ones will be is silly.
When you can answer the question as to why that is,
Just did.
then you'll understand why most airplanes have such basic autopilots that haven't really been improved on in many decades.
I already understand that, and I already understand that using them as an example of how things will be perfect on the ground is ridiculous. But you were promoting how advanced those same autopilots are when you talked about autoland, so I'm confused about what you actually think.
I understand that Silicon Dust is working on a product that will do the same thing as Media Center (including DVRing protected Cable Card content).
Let's hope that it isn't as much of a system pig as View is. I have two systems talking to a HDHomeRun with a three tuner CableCard. I could run three instances of QuickView to watch three things at once, but on the same systems I cannot run even one View without image breakup.
And if it has the same unintuitive counterproductive UI that View has, it will be DOA.
I have never found difficulty detecting humans in a crowd. OK, nit picking, but I have a point.
He didn't write that it was a difficult problem for human beings, he wrote that it is an important problem in the context of computer vision. What you find difficult or easy can be exactly the opposite for computer vision, and whether a problem is important to solve or not has nothing to do with how easy it is for you to do it manually.
For example, I have a current remote sensing problem that is important for us to solve. It is easy for a human being to look at the data and determine the answer. Unfortunately, I have neither the money nor the time to hire people to look at the hundreds of thousands of images to do the easy job, so I have to come up with a way of getting the computer to at least winnow that set down to a manageable number so humans can do the rest.
Now, you may not consider this an important problem because you don't care, but it is important to the people who need to use the data. Just like it is important for the computer monitoring the camera overlooking the park to be able to signal to the human operators that there is a crowd of greater than the defined size gathering there and they might need to do something, even if that "something" is as simple as having the porta-potty people drop off a few more.