C'mon, man, if you're going to comment, at least RTFA!
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 1
Seconded. I bought a copy of the book (hardback, even) a couple of months after I bought my bike on numerous recommendations. While there are parts that appeal to the biker in me, the book is great even without the biker appeal. I've been told that a lot of people (bikers, mostly, as that's the crowd in which I hear about it most) read it annually, and get something new out of it every time. I'm still working on my first reading, and have been for six months--I'm in the "meaty" part, and I can't read more than about ten pages at a time and really digest the material; it takes several days of pondering to really "get it." If you're interested in something intellectually stimulating, pick up a copy. Oh, and if you don'get the new one, don't read the foreword before the main story; it gives away too many details that would better be left to figure out.
Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with a good football program, and other sports as well. Football in particular is a big moneymaker for the school. Consider a school with a decent football team: they probably have a stadium seating around 75,000 (here at OU, we just built an addition to the stadium that will take us to over 100K, but I digress). Figure an average of twenty bucks a ticket (yes, student tickets are cheaper, but non-student tickets are more expensive, and box seats are absurd). Even a light attendance of 50K (remember, a decent team) is a million bucks a game. A sellout game will rake in between $1.5 and $2 million. That covers the cost of the athletic program.
Now, for the profits...donors. Donors like football. One guy I know (actually, the guy whose airplane I fly, including to away games) donates lots of money to the University. Probably at least a quarter million a year, possibly more. That's one donor, and he's small-time (by comparison). I have personally seen Gulfstream V's (yes, plural) come to town just for the game. These are the kind of people who give a million dollars or more every year...money that goes into the Univeristy's General Fund almost without exception.
So, with the football team paying for itself with ticket sales, those donations, many of which are a result of a good football team (don't believe me? Compare the annual donations to the win record...strong positive correlation), and the football team turns quite a tidy profit for the University. Oh, yes, and don't forget the concessions, and the licensed merchandise, and the free publicity (nationally-televised games are great for getting the word out), and football (and other sports) turn out to be a pretty good investment for the school.
And while you're thanking God for the government (I'll not repeat what the other poster said), be sure to thank them for driving the costs up to that level in the first place.
I work in the medical industry; I sell and maintain teleradiology equipment. DiCOM stuff, for anybody who knows what I'm talking about. You wouldn't believe the level of testing and certification and approval required for medical equipment. Even our stuff, which is never seen by the patient, has Draconian certification regulations. To wit: we use remote access tools to work on the systems we support (spread over a five-state area). We have a (short) list of software we're allowed to use. Timbuktu is on that list; VNC, in any form, is not. PCAnywhere is not. Most others are not. And this all presupposes properly-configured VPNs, preventing access from those who shouldn't be allowed; even with good firewalls and VPNs, we're still restricted. The rules are absolutely absurd.
But yes, thank the Government! They fix all the world's problems, certainly not causing any. Yes, what would we do without Government?
Digits are safe? I think not. Recent studies indicate that up to 100% of virus-infected e-mails contain digits, particularly "1" and "0." This gives us an easy, 100% effective solution to the virus problem: block all communications contining those two troublesome digits.
If you could see the target, it would be a difficult but certainly possible shot. Blind, it'd be near impossible.
It's called "indirect fire." Ask your friendly local Marine about it.
But seriously, indirect fire is exactly what artillery guys do. Yes, sometimes it's direct (shooting at things you can see), but frequently it's indirect. Ever heard of a forward observer? That's the guy out looking at the target and giving directions to the fire team to guide the rounds onto the target. Today, with modern weaponry and fire computers, a surprising number of rounds hit on the first try. Yes, "blind fire" does work.
Re:Two funny (sad) arithmetic stories
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Making Change
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· Score: 1
Erm. How old are you, anyway?
22. And a flight instructor. I have a circular slide rule on my wristwatch (surprisingly handy), and a full E6-B (several, actually) in my flight bag (and in my planning desk, and so forth). I teach the E6-B in preference to the electronic calculators, and can frequently do things either faster on the manual model, or, in some cases, not at all on the electronic.
Yes, the slide rule is mostly a novelty these days among the commoners, and with good reason, but the principles shouldn't be. I'm a product of the public schools (scary but true), and I learned the basics of slide rules there; more importantly, I learned why slide rules work. That last part is the important one.
Additionally, you mention people losing orders of magnitude. That's another thing you learn with slide rules: error checking (sanity checking). Give me a problem (within reason) and I can give you an estimate, usually within 5% of the correct answer...in a few seconds. I'm no math whiz (shit, I dropped out of engineering because of math), but I do know how numbers fit together. For which I thank my Chemistry teachers (certainly not my math teachers...).
a better solution... would be to design a 802.11 repeater. A Accesspoint that simply relay's all traffic it recieves to the other accesspoint and the same in reverse.. this would make setting the whole thing up easier. 1 accesspoint and then 4 repeaters spread out around the first makes a nice coverage map for a large area.
802.11b repeater? Sure. Very simple. 2 access points + crossover cable. Make sure to set the APs to different (compatible) channels, and have fun.
Two days in a row, folks. I'm a resident of Norman, OK. We're not getting hit (somehow, Norman hasn't been bothered in fifty years or so), but OKC just got nailed. The latest series (at least two multiple-vortex tornadoes, both in the same supercell) tracked basically along I-40 to I-44, and, as of this posting, is still moving along I-44 toward Tulsa. Bethany, OK (on the northwest corner) was the worst hit. Wiley Post airport is in Bethany; I was flying up there not two hours before the shit (and everything else, including the kitchen sink and the roof) hit the fan. I was back in Norman by that time, but right now there are nearly 25K people without power. Damages are going to run into the dozens, if not hundreds of millions--there were about a dozen Beech 1900s parked on the ramp at PWA, right in the path of the tornado, along with a bunch of classic airplanes nearby. And that's just the airport.
In short, today looks like it's going to be a lot more damaging than yesterday. Anybody in the area, we're going to need a lot of help cleaning up.
Actually, no handheld GPS is "approved" for navigational use. Indeed, even the panel-mount models aren't approved until they've been individually field tested (I've run into this in an airplane I fly). It's not an approval issue, it's a "selling a more expensive model" issue. To wit: the Garmin GPS III listed for about $300 when I was looking at them; the GPS III Pilot, which was electrically identical, varying only in the database (and the groundspeed function of the software) was $650. The idea is to prevent pilots from buying a cheap GPS when we can be "encouraged" to buy something more expensive. In any case, I assure you, it's not an approval issue, as there are no approved handhelds, period.
I've always wanted to take my GPS on a plane and check out to see if the pilot is speaking the truth when announcing the altitude, plus checking speed would be cool. Anyone the rules about a GPS on a plane?
A) He's sort-of telling the truth. Above 18,000 feet, we fly at "Flight Levels," not altitudes. When passing through 18,000, we reset our alitmeters to the standard value (29.92" Hg, or 1013 mb, 760 mm Hg, or whatever your preferred value for standard pressure), instead of the local barometric pressure (corrected for elevation). Therefore, with the altimeter set to a pressure other than the actual local pressure, you will see some variance between FL270 and 27,000 feet. Realistically, it won't be much, but there will be some. He only reports it in feet because the majority of people out there don't know what a Flight Level is (and don't care), and because it's a negligible error.
B) As far as using your GPS in flight, the relevant passage in the FAR is:
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any U.S.-registered civil aircraft operating under this part....(except)... Any other portable electronic device that the Part 91 certificate holder has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used. (Substitute Part 121, 123, 125, or 135, as necessary, depending on the operation; the language is otherwise identital)
The certificate holder is the airline; the airline is responsible for making the determination. Realistically, though, if you ask the pilot, he'll usually let you. I always let my passengers use GPS recivers, and most captains are pretty cool about it (they might ask you to wait until reaching cruise).
As to the other post regarding inability to get a signal, trust me, it comes through just fine. I routinely use handheld GPS in airplanes, and as long as I can get near a window, I rarely have trouble (occasionally, the satellites are all on the other side of the airplane...)
You misspelled "Jet-A," which is chemically far more similar to kerosene (or kerosine, as I'm guessing you're British from your use of the term "fags" for cigarettes) than gasoline. Jet-A is far tougher to ignite than gasoline; in fact, it's very much like diesel, which requires significant pressure (or additives such ammonium nitrate) to do anything really interesting.
Nonetheless, lighting up when you have a strong fuel odor around ranks fairly high on my list of things that are A) ballsy, B) stupid, or C) All of the Above.
(Avgas actually refers to aviation gasoline, which is, in fact, a gasoline product, and therefore really hazardous. It's an important distinction in this case.)
I believe you meant to say "DME, VOR and ILS are based on ancient technology that is well-proven and works.
Seriously, the reason the ILS hasn't changed in half a century is that it has a wide installation base (so changes would affect hundreds of thousands of airplanes around the world). We have a technology with incredible inertia; lots of people use it, and it is ungodly-expensive to replace avionics. (Nav/Comm radio? $2K for a nice one. GPS? Try $10K for some of the nicer models, equivalent to what you find in nicer cars these days. And that's in the light aviation market--radios in jets start closer to fifty grand apiece, and most airplanes have three or four comms, three or four nav radios, GPS, etc.) Changing technology requires exhaustive testing to gain certification, and an enormous investment from all parties; if a new system is going to "take off" (pun intended), it will have to be available in a wide area, or else nobody will want to pay for it.
The ILS has seen some incremental improvements; standard (Category I) ILS typically guides the airplane down to 200' above ground level (AGL). Cat II ILS, which requires special equipment on the ground and in the air, and special pilot training, reduces that to 100' AGL. Cat III ILs (which is actually subdivided into IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc), can provide guidance all the way down to the runway, in zero-zero conditions (zero foot cloud ceiling, zero foot forward visibility). The technology is proven reliable, relatively simple (always nice), and has the capability to go to zero-zero; what more do you really want from it?
VOR is "good enough" for most purposes; it has a nominal accuracy of four degrees (if memory serves), which is only four miles' error when you're sixty miles from the station. In most parts of the US, you would be hard-pressed to get more than sixty miles from a station. Four miles' error may sound like a lot, but it's really quite inconsequential--all of the other airplanes on VOR are seeing the same error, so it's a simple transposition, and you're in controlled airspace anyway, with a guy watching a radar screen to keep an eye on things. On top of that, the absolute error decreases as you approach the station. Given that most VORs are either on or near airports, the problem takes care of itself; as you get close to the airport (where precision is more important), the error decreases. Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) is plenty accurate at low altitude[0], and at high altitude, errors are less critical; on top of that, when using DME, everything is referenced to DME readings, so again, it's a transposition error. As long as everybody's on the same page, it's not a concern.
If you really need that degree of positional accuracy, there's GPS, which is being adopted with great enthusiasm by the aviation community. If you need more precision, use WAAS/LAAS, or inertial nav, or all of the above into a flight management system; if you need that kind of precision, though, you're probably referencing yourself to something specific on the ground. If that's the case, there's a wonderful navigation technology that can give you all kinds of precision. It's called "eyeballs."
Voice (and other stuff) is done using AM instead of FM because AM has lower power requirements for equivalent service; less power means less weight in the airplane, and better service for the ground station. Jam-resistant modulation? Again, we run into the problem of paying for the upgrade (unless, of course, you're offering), testing (and lots of it), and the fact that we have no real need. If we get into a situation where we're in that much trouble, the civilian fleet will no doubt be grounded (again!), and the military already has encrypted, jam-resistant communications and navigation technology. What we really need is more bandwidth, and we're getting that by reducing the channel spacing (comm channels have gone from 50kHz to 25kHz, and are moving to 8.33kHz)
The navigation instruments in question are extremely sensitive; that precision is required when operating in the terminal area (particularly on the approach) in clouds or other visual obstruction. Operating in such conditions is done under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). Particularly in the terminal area, IFR operations depend on precision, with less error tolerated the closer the airplane is to landing. On final approach (200' above the ground, 1/4 mile from the touchdown zone, moving at 150 knots, for a typical airliner; some approaches can be flown entirely by instrument, without ever seeing the ground, all the way to touchdown), precision is very important; a very small error could have significant consequences.
Navigating from city-to-city is usually done with the aid of instruments regardless of conditions, but doesn't require quite so much precision--consider that, in trying to find New York, you're looking for a target several hundred square miles in area. A half-mile here or there is irrelevant.
How did they hit the buildings? Well, if you saw any video at all of any of the crashes, you might have noticed the color of the sky: blue. As in, no clouds. Without clouds or other visual obstructions, operations can be carried out under Visual Flight Rules (VFR). In short, the terrorists steered the airplanes toward the targets that they could see, visually, from many miles out!
Fascism:Extreme right-wing dictatorial government,belligerently nationalist,that merges state and business leadership
From dictionary.com:
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Central authority? Check. Stringent socioeconomic controls? Check. Suppression of opposition through terror and censorship? Check--the KGB was really good at that. Belligerent nationalism, etc? Check.
Funny, Soviet-style Communism sounds an awful lot like fascism, but without all that "extreme right-wing" stuff.
I had a similar experience with SBC. Last May (2002), I moved, and cancelled my service. Switched to Cox. Thought I was done dealing with the clowns. Imagine my surprise, then, to get a "Dear Deadbeat" letter from them in February. Yes, February. Called them about it, they said it was for transferring my service, and that it was billed in December. Well, that's a little more reasonable--only seven months, instead of nine. I called them, no help. Called their main office in Atlanta, no help.
Coincidentally, they'd been telemarketing to me about once a week, despite my having told them to knock it off. Fed up, I tracked down the President for my state (Oklahoma), talked to her office, and told them I'd be suing them. Didn't just make vague legal threats, though--I cited title and section number, and read the first part of the filing papers, just to show that I wasn't blowing smoke. When they heard title and section, and particularly when I demonstrated that I had the papers in hand, filled out and ready to submit, thier entire attitude changed. For the first time in the month I'd been dealing with the problem, they took me seriously. The problem went away in about 24 hours: the calls stopped, and the charge was dropped.
I would suggest a similar approach. Go down to the local courthouse and ask them for the paperwork to file a small-claims civil suit. Take them home, fill them out. Takes about five minutes--they're simple forms. Then call the executive offices and tell them that if they don't fix the problem, you'll sue, and make sure they understand that you're willing to do it--that's the reason for reading from the form. You'd be surprised how quickly their attitudes change. Lawsuits are an expensive proposition for them--even if they win, it costs them a buttload in legal fees. It is to their advantage to square things away out of court, particularly when they're wrong.
Anyhow, that's my story and suggestion. If I can help you, feel free to drop me an e-mail at AT barefootclown.net. (I own the domain, so any local part comes to me, doesn't matter what you put there.)
--Dave
I forget the name of the program but it serves ASP pages and compiles everything to an EXE.
Does it come with Wine?
No, seriously, this isn't a troll.
With a newspaper, all I need to read the content is my eyeballs (OK, I also need glasses, but that's a personal problem). With your ASP system, you need a computer, a media reader for the storage media, you apparently need Windows (gotta love those nice, proprietary systems), electricity...did I mention the proprietary system?
This is a real problem for a legitimate news site. Sure, a personal web site, or a niche magazine, or the like, isn't that critical, but a general news site should should be available to the masses. And for posterity...how many forty year old computer systems do you see in common use? Forty years is nothing in terms of "posterity." I was looking at some old pictures of my family, many of which dated back over a hundred years. Will your system be viewable in a century? Will people even know how to extract the data, let alone display it, in that time?
Bottom line is, ain't nobody improved on a good old pair of eyes for long-term data archival.
But the real reason I see the death of print media as a shame is the historical record the papers provide.
In addition to the fleeting nature of bits, there is another point in favor of print newspapers: editibility (or lack thereof). I have personally seen a number of news stories appear on the web sites of various newspapers, then when I go back to read them later, they've been changed. Sometimes it's just a spelling correction (has anybody else noticed that FOXNews has had a lousy week in the spelling department?), but sometimes it's a substantial change, completely changing the meaning of a story. Those changes are rarely, if ever, marked (the one thing the Slashdot editors do right, IMHO, is posting errata, instead of just changing the stories). Such transparent changes totally destroys the usefulness of the medium as an historical record; there is no good way of determining if the record has been altered. While dead-tree format can be changed, it's a serious ordeal to attempt, and may or may not be successful, particularly with a large number of copies in circulation. I think hardcopy will remain important for a long time for archival purposes, and I, for one, will mourn its demise.
I'm amazed nobody has mentioned Princeton Graphics yet. I've had an AGF900 for about four years now, and it's about the nicest piece of glass I've ever used. I've played with a Viewsonic G-series 21", and I just didn't like it as much as my 19" Princeton. Yes, you'll pay for it, but wow, is it beautiful. I use it for Photoshop and Quake III, mostly, and even after four years (and five changes of location, and several months in storage, and...) it still looks as good as the day I bought it. On top of that, it supports sync-on-green, so I can use it with SGIs, Suns, and other expensive workstations; certainly beats the crappy monitors SGI sells (I had an O2 on my desk a few years ago with a 21" SGI monitor, and all I thought about, all day long, was how much I wanted my Princeton).
Anyhow, there's my two cents: buy a Princeton and be happy.
Slashdot Mirror
Do they involve the sound of one hand clapping?
Only if he's deaf, too.
That's not "RoBoCop", that's "OverclockedCop" -- they need a case-mod.
Just leave the case open.
C'mon, man, if you're going to comment, at least RTFA!
Seconded. I bought a copy of the book (hardback, even) a couple of months after I bought my bike on numerous recommendations. While there are parts that appeal to the biker in me, the book is great even without the biker appeal. I've been told that a lot of people (bikers, mostly, as that's the crowd in which I hear about it most) read it annually, and get something new out of it every time. I'm still working on my first reading, and have been for six months--I'm in the "meaty" part, and I can't read more than about ten pages at a time and really digest the material; it takes several days of pondering to really "get it." If you're interested in something intellectually stimulating, pick up a copy. Oh, and if you don'get the new one, don't read the foreword before the main story; it gives away too many details that would better be left to figure out.
Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with a good football program, and other sports as well. Football in particular is a big moneymaker for the school. Consider a school with a decent football team: they probably have a stadium seating around 75,000 (here at OU, we just built an addition to the stadium that will take us to over 100K, but I digress). Figure an average of twenty bucks a ticket (yes, student tickets are cheaper, but non-student tickets are more expensive, and box seats are absurd). Even a light attendance of 50K (remember, a decent team) is a million bucks a game. A sellout game will rake in between $1.5 and $2 million. That covers the cost of the athletic program.
Now, for the profits...donors. Donors like football. One guy I know (actually, the guy whose airplane I fly, including to away games) donates lots of money to the University. Probably at least a quarter million a year, possibly more. That's one donor, and he's small-time (by comparison). I have personally seen Gulfstream V's (yes, plural) come to town just for the game. These are the kind of people who give a million dollars or more every year...money that goes into the Univeristy's General Fund almost without exception.
So, with the football team paying for itself with ticket sales, those donations, many of which are a result of a good football team (don't believe me? Compare the annual donations to the win record...strong positive correlation), and the football team turns quite a tidy profit for the University. Oh, yes, and don't forget the concessions, and the licensed merchandise, and the free publicity (nationally-televised games are great for getting the word out), and football (and other sports) turn out to be a pretty good investment for the school.
by the government (thank god)
And while you're thanking God for the government (I'll not repeat what the other poster said), be sure to thank them for driving the costs up to that level in the first place.
I work in the medical industry; I sell and maintain teleradiology equipment. DiCOM stuff, for anybody who knows what I'm talking about. You wouldn't believe the level of testing and certification and approval required for medical equipment. Even our stuff, which is never seen by the patient, has Draconian certification regulations. To wit: we use remote access tools to work on the systems we support (spread over a five-state area). We have a (short) list of software we're allowed to use. Timbuktu is on that list; VNC, in any form, is not. PCAnywhere is not. Most others are not. And this all presupposes properly-configured VPNs, preventing access from those who shouldn't be allowed; even with good firewalls and VPNs, we're still restricted. The rules are absolutely absurd.
But yes, thank the Government! They fix all the world's problems, certainly not causing any. Yes, what would we do without Government?
Yes, I had a long day at work; why do you ask?
Digits are safe? I think not. Recent studies indicate that up to 100% of virus-infected e-mails contain digits, particularly "1" and "0." This gives us an easy, 100% effective solution to the virus problem: block all communications contining those two troublesome digits.
If you could see the target, it would be a difficult but certainly possible shot. Blind, it'd be near impossible.
It's called "indirect fire." Ask your friendly local Marine about it.
But seriously, indirect fire is exactly what artillery guys do. Yes, sometimes it's direct (shooting at things you can see), but frequently it's indirect. Ever heard of a forward observer? That's the guy out looking at the target and giving directions to the fire team to guide the rounds onto the target. Today, with modern weaponry and fire computers, a surprising number of rounds hit on the first try. Yes, "blind fire" does work.
Erm. How old are you, anyway?
22. And a flight instructor. I have a circular slide rule on my wristwatch (surprisingly handy), and a full E6-B (several, actually) in my flight bag (and in my planning desk, and so forth). I teach the E6-B in preference to the electronic calculators, and can frequently do things either faster on the manual model, or, in some cases, not at all on the electronic.
Yes, the slide rule is mostly a novelty these days among the commoners, and with good reason, but the principles shouldn't be. I'm a product of the public schools (scary but true), and I learned the basics of slide rules there; more importantly, I learned why slide rules work. That last part is the important one.
Additionally, you mention people losing orders of magnitude. That's another thing you learn with slide rules: error checking (sanity checking). Give me a problem (within reason) and I can give you an estimate, usually within 5% of the correct answer...in a few seconds. I'm no math whiz (shit, I dropped out of engineering because of math), but I do know how numbers fit together. For which I thank my Chemistry teachers (certainly not my math teachers...).
a better solution... would be to design a 802.11 repeater. A Accesspoint that simply relay's all traffic it recieves to the other accesspoint and the same in reverse.. this would make setting the whole thing up easier. 1 accesspoint and then 4 repeaters spread out around the first makes a nice coverage map for a large area.
802.11b repeater? Sure. Very simple. 2 access points + crossover cable. Make sure to set the APs to different (compatible) channels, and have fun.
and below standard in english.
Well, you do post on Slashdot...
Two days in a row, folks. I'm a resident of Norman, OK. We're not getting hit (somehow, Norman hasn't been bothered in fifty years or so), but OKC just got nailed. The latest series (at least two multiple-vortex tornadoes, both in the same supercell) tracked basically along I-40 to I-44, and, as of this posting, is still moving along I-44 toward Tulsa. Bethany, OK (on the northwest corner) was the worst hit. Wiley Post airport is in Bethany; I was flying up there not two hours before the shit (and everything else, including the kitchen sink and the roof) hit the fan. I was back in Norman by that time, but right now there are nearly 25K people without power. Damages are going to run into the dozens, if not hundreds of millions--there were about a dozen Beech 1900s parked on the ramp at PWA, right in the path of the tornado, along with a bunch of classic airplanes nearby. And that's just the airport.
In short, today looks like it's going to be a lot more damaging than yesterday. Anybody in the area, we're going to need a lot of help cleaning up.
Victory for free speech or perversion of justice? You decide.
Me? I thought that was up to the judge, who already decided.
Actually, no handheld GPS is "approved" for navigational use. Indeed, even the panel-mount models aren't approved until they've been individually field tested (I've run into this in an airplane I fly). It's not an approval issue, it's a "selling a more expensive model" issue. To wit: the Garmin GPS III listed for about $300 when I was looking at them; the GPS III Pilot, which was electrically identical, varying only in the database (and the groundspeed function of the software) was $650. The idea is to prevent pilots from buying a cheap GPS when we can be "encouraged" to buy something more expensive. In any case, I assure you, it's not an approval issue, as there are no approved handhelds, period.
I've always wanted to take my GPS on a plane and check out to see if the pilot is speaking the truth when announcing the altitude, plus checking speed would be cool. Anyone the rules about a GPS on a plane?
A) He's sort-of telling the truth. Above 18,000 feet, we fly at "Flight Levels," not altitudes. When passing through 18,000, we reset our alitmeters to the standard value (29.92" Hg, or 1013 mb, 760 mm Hg, or whatever your preferred value for standard pressure), instead of the local barometric pressure (corrected for elevation). Therefore, with the altimeter set to a pressure other than the actual local pressure, you will see some variance between FL270 and 27,000 feet. Realistically, it won't be much, but there will be some. He only reports it in feet because the majority of people out there don't know what a Flight Level is (and don't care), and because it's a negligible error.
B) As far as using your GPS in flight, the relevant passage in the FAR is:
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any U.S.-registered civil aircraft operating under this part. ...(except)... Any other portable electronic device that the Part 91 certificate holder has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used. (Substitute Part 121, 123, 125, or 135, as necessary, depending on the operation; the language is otherwise identital)
The certificate holder is the airline; the airline is responsible for making the determination. Realistically, though, if you ask the pilot, he'll usually let you. I always let my passengers use GPS recivers, and most captains are pretty cool about it (they might ask you to wait until reaching cruise).
As to the other post regarding inability to get a signal, trust me, it comes through just fine. I routinely use handheld GPS in airplanes, and as long as I can get near a window, I rarely have trouble (occasionally, the satellites are all on the other side of the airplane...)
You misspelled "Jet-A," which is chemically far more similar to kerosene (or kerosine, as I'm guessing you're British from your use of the term "fags" for cigarettes) than gasoline. Jet-A is far tougher to ignite than gasoline; in fact, it's very much like diesel, which requires significant pressure (or additives such ammonium nitrate) to do anything really interesting.
Nonetheless, lighting up when you have a strong fuel odor around ranks fairly high on my list of things that are A) ballsy, B) stupid, or C) All of the Above.
(Avgas actually refers to aviation gasoline, which is, in fact, a gasoline product, and therefore really hazardous. It's an important distinction in this case.)
DME, VOR and ILS are based on ancient technology.
I believe you meant to say "DME, VOR and ILS are based on ancient technology that is well-proven and works.
Seriously, the reason the ILS hasn't changed in half a century is that it has a wide installation base (so changes would affect hundreds of thousands of airplanes around the world). We have a technology with incredible inertia; lots of people use it, and it is ungodly-expensive to replace avionics. (Nav/Comm radio? $2K for a nice one. GPS? Try $10K for some of the nicer models, equivalent to what you find in nicer cars these days. And that's in the light aviation market--radios in jets start closer to fifty grand apiece, and most airplanes have three or four comms, three or four nav radios, GPS, etc.) Changing technology requires exhaustive testing to gain certification, and an enormous investment from all parties; if a new system is going to "take off" (pun intended), it will have to be available in a wide area, or else nobody will want to pay for it.
The ILS has seen some incremental improvements; standard (Category I) ILS typically guides the airplane down to 200' above ground level (AGL). Cat II ILS, which requires special equipment on the ground and in the air, and special pilot training, reduces that to 100' AGL. Cat III ILs (which is actually subdivided into IIIa, IIIb, and IIIc), can provide guidance all the way down to the runway, in zero-zero conditions (zero foot cloud ceiling, zero foot forward visibility). The technology is proven reliable, relatively simple (always nice), and has the capability to go to zero-zero; what more do you really want from it?
VOR is "good enough" for most purposes; it has a nominal accuracy of four degrees (if memory serves), which is only four miles' error when you're sixty miles from the station. In most parts of the US, you would be hard-pressed to get more than sixty miles from a station. Four miles' error may sound like a lot, but it's really quite inconsequential--all of the other airplanes on VOR are seeing the same error, so it's a simple transposition, and you're in controlled airspace anyway, with a guy watching a radar screen to keep an eye on things. On top of that, the absolute error decreases as you approach the station. Given that most VORs are either on or near airports, the problem takes care of itself; as you get close to the airport (where precision is more important), the error decreases. Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) is plenty accurate at low altitude[0], and at high altitude, errors are less critical; on top of that, when using DME, everything is referenced to DME readings, so again, it's a transposition error. As long as everybody's on the same page, it's not a concern.
If you really need that degree of positional accuracy, there's GPS, which is being adopted with great enthusiasm by the aviation community. If you need more precision, use WAAS/LAAS, or inertial nav, or all of the above into a flight management system; if you need that kind of precision, though, you're probably referencing yourself to something specific on the ground. If that's the case, there's a wonderful navigation technology that can give you all kinds of precision. It's called "eyeballs."
Voice (and other stuff) is done using AM instead of FM because AM has lower power requirements for equivalent service; less power means less weight in the airplane, and better service for the ground station. Jam-resistant modulation? Again, we run into the problem of paying for the upgrade (unless, of course, you're offering), testing (and lots of it), and the fact that we have no real need. If we get into a situation where we're in that much trouble, the civilian fleet will no doubt be grounded (again!), and the military already has encrypted, jam-resistant communications and navigation technology. What we really need is more bandwidth, and we're getting that by reducing the channel spacing (comm channels have gone from 50kHz to 25kHz, and are moving to 8.33kHz)
The navigation instruments in question are extremely sensitive; that precision is required when operating in the terminal area (particularly on the approach) in clouds or other visual obstruction. Operating in such conditions is done under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). Particularly in the terminal area, IFR operations depend on precision, with less error tolerated the closer the airplane is to landing. On final approach (200' above the ground, 1/4 mile from the touchdown zone, moving at 150 knots, for a typical airliner; some approaches can be flown entirely by instrument, without ever seeing the ground, all the way to touchdown), precision is very important; a very small error could have significant consequences.
Navigating from city-to-city is usually done with the aid of instruments regardless of conditions, but doesn't require quite so much precision--consider that, in trying to find New York, you're looking for a target several hundred square miles in area. A half-mile here or there is irrelevant.
How did they hit the buildings? Well, if you saw any video at all of any of the crashes, you might have noticed the color of the sky: blue. As in, no clouds. Without clouds or other visual obstructions, operations can be carried out under Visual Flight Rules (VFR). In short, the terrorists steered the airplanes toward the targets that they could see, visually, from many miles out!
Duh.
Fascism:Extreme right-wing dictatorial government,belligerently nationalist,that merges state and business leadership
From dictionary.com:
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Central authority? Check. Stringent socioeconomic controls? Check. Suppression of opposition through terror and censorship? Check--the KGB was really good at that. Belligerent nationalism, etc? Check.
Funny, Soviet-style Communism sounds an awful lot like fascism, but without all that "extreme right-wing" stuff.
I had a similar experience with SBC. Last May (2002), I moved, and cancelled my service. Switched to Cox. Thought I was done dealing with the clowns. Imagine my surprise, then, to get a "Dear Deadbeat" letter from them in February. Yes, February. Called them about it, they said it was for transferring my service, and that it was billed in December. Well, that's a little more reasonable--only seven months, instead of nine. I called them, no help. Called their main office in Atlanta, no help.
Coincidentally, they'd been telemarketing to me about once a week, despite my having told them to knock it off. Fed up, I tracked down the President for my state (Oklahoma), talked to her office, and told them I'd be suing them. Didn't just make vague legal threats, though--I cited title and section number, and read the first part of the filing papers, just to show that I wasn't blowing smoke. When they heard title and section, and particularly when I demonstrated that I had the papers in hand, filled out and ready to submit, thier entire attitude changed. For the first time in the month I'd been dealing with the problem, they took me seriously. The problem went away in about 24 hours: the calls stopped, and the charge was dropped.
I would suggest a similar approach. Go down to the local courthouse and ask them for the paperwork to file a small-claims civil suit. Take them home, fill them out. Takes about five minutes--they're simple forms. Then call the executive offices and tell them that if they don't fix the problem, you'll sue, and make sure they understand that you're willing to do it--that's the reason for reading from the form. You'd be surprised how quickly their attitudes change. Lawsuits are an expensive proposition for them--even if they win, it costs them a buttload in legal fees. It is to their advantage to square things away out of court, particularly when they're wrong.
Anyhow, that's my story and suggestion. If I can help you, feel free to drop me an e-mail at AT barefootclown.net. (I own the domain, so any local part comes to me, doesn't matter what you put there.) --Dave
I'd put LSD in the water. Why actually do the grunt work when it's easier to just get everybody to believe you did?
I forget the name of the program but it serves ASP pages and compiles everything to an EXE.
Does it come with Wine?
No, seriously, this isn't a troll.
With a newspaper, all I need to read the content is my eyeballs (OK, I also need glasses, but that's a personal problem). With your ASP system, you need a computer, a media reader for the storage media, you apparently need Windows (gotta love those nice, proprietary systems), electricity...did I mention the proprietary system?
This is a real problem for a legitimate news site. Sure, a personal web site, or a niche magazine, or the like, isn't that critical, but a general news site should should be available to the masses. And for posterity...how many forty year old computer systems do you see in common use? Forty years is nothing in terms of "posterity." I was looking at some old pictures of my family, many of which dated back over a hundred years. Will your system be viewable in a century? Will people even know how to extract the data, let alone display it, in that time?
Bottom line is, ain't nobody improved on a good old pair of eyes for long-term data archival.
But the real reason I see the death of print media as a shame is the historical record the papers provide.
In addition to the fleeting nature of bits, there is another point in favor of print newspapers: editibility (or lack thereof). I have personally seen a number of news stories appear on the web sites of various newspapers, then when I go back to read them later, they've been changed. Sometimes it's just a spelling correction (has anybody else noticed that FOXNews has had a lousy week in the spelling department?), but sometimes it's a substantial change, completely changing the meaning of a story. Those changes are rarely, if ever, marked (the one thing the Slashdot editors do right, IMHO, is posting errata, instead of just changing the stories). Such transparent changes totally destroys the usefulness of the medium as an historical record; there is no good way of determining if the record has been altered. While dead-tree format can be changed, it's a serious ordeal to attempt, and may or may not be successful, particularly with a large number of copies in circulation. I think hardcopy will remain important for a long time for archival purposes, and I, for one, will mourn its demise.
If you eat fish or other sea-food, better buy it alive and have the butcher kill it for you...
Buy? What's this buying stuff? I buy flies and lures; the fish are free (well, after I've paid Big Brother for the privilege of trying to eat).
/me gloating about his boss paying him to go fishing...and providing the airplane to fly to the stream
I'm amazed nobody has mentioned Princeton Graphics yet. I've had an AGF900 for about four years now, and it's about the nicest piece of glass I've ever used. I've played with a Viewsonic G-series 21", and I just didn't like it as much as my 19" Princeton. Yes, you'll pay for it, but wow, is it beautiful. I use it for Photoshop and Quake III, mostly, and even after four years (and five changes of location, and several months in storage, and...) it still looks as good as the day I bought it. On top of that, it supports sync-on-green, so I can use it with SGIs, Suns, and other expensive workstations; certainly beats the crappy monitors SGI sells (I had an O2 on my desk a few years ago with a 21" SGI monitor, and all I thought about, all day long, was how much I wanted my Princeton).
Anyhow, there's my two cents: buy a Princeton and be happy.