Who designed the Tacoma Narrows bridge? The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkway? The De Havilland Comet 1? The Ocean Ranger oil rig? The L'Ambiance Plaza in Bridgeport, Connecticut? Pre-Challenger solid rocket boosters? Hubble space telescope optics? The Cypress Structure (collapsed in 1989 Loma Prieta eauthquake)?
I knew I should have put a caveat in there
Ok 99.99999% reliable. In most of the cases you mention the reason for failure was encountering a novel method of failure, that hadn't been seen before which is quite rightly the engineers fault for not anticipating it or basic human error which will happen in any situation, but should still be designed against by the good engineer.
Tacoma Narrows bridge - One of first examples of resonance in a large structure caused by wind. Regency hotel Walkway - Predominantly human error in communication coupled with a poor engineering decision Ocean Ranger rig - Engineering design coupled with human incompetance and poor safety routines. DeHavilland Comet- New intensity of cyclic stress strain loading in 1st commercial jet plane.L'ambiance Plaza Generally poor design in a (fairly) new technique.Rocket boostersDesign and checking failure on a massively complex project, obviously pushing the boundries. Hubble optics Not realy in the same catagory, but poor checking procedure, again pushing the envelope.Cypress StructureOver zealous engineers working to code, in an environment they didn't realy understand. Also a relatively novel construction when built.
I know it's not an excuse to say 'we didn't know it worked like that we'll do it better next time'. Compared to the number of structures built the number of failures is very small, engineers have a high level of training to keep it that way. It's a shame that (in the UK at least) we tend to sell our services cheap which doesn't reflect on the importance and responcibilty that we have. When individual code monkeys can get sued for the money a company lost due to there poor code, then they'll make themselves into engineers.
...who also does a bit of coding (parallel Fortran mainly) I'd like to argue that code monkeys ain't engineers. There are two main reasons why:
1. It takes a lot of effort to train as an engineer - I've spent 4yrs studying hard, and will need another 3/4yrs on site training before I get to be a qualified engineer. And when/if I get there I'll be responsible for designing things that won't fall down/blowup/wobble/burst into flames/etc, on my head be it if I kill a few hundred people. It only takes a small amount of knowledge and experience to start writing good code, as the environment in which you are working is so constrained. Proper (good) engineers have to take into consideration a much wider range of problems to come up with a design that works.
2. The product of an engineers work is totally reliable - How many of the people reading this article right now, are worried about the floor they are supported by or the roof above them falling in? Compare that to the number of you that would not at all be surprised if the code they were currently running suddenly fell apart.
Engineers do try to limit there market, and are fiercly proud of there title, in my opinion rightly so
True, the only chance of us detecting them is if they are either, in the same (short) period of technology as us, where they use vastly powerful electomagnetic radiation to transfer low bandwidth data over great distances. Or they are deliberatly trying to contact other life around 'suitable' star systems, which if they are anything like us then they will be doing.
The former would be quite difficult to find as there is such a small window to look in, requiring a seti style programme. Wheras the latter should be alot easier to find, assuming they are vulcanesque and using logical frequencies and patterns to try and communicate. This should only require a single good detector that cycled round looking at the most appropriate local star systems in the most likely spectrums. ASSUMING they are doing the same with a signal the two should meet up eventually...
From my experiance of 2 UK uni's. One had a fairly strict (and low) bandwidth cap of about 1Gb/day and the other was totally lax, allowing a friend of mine to run a 40Gb/day (higher when he managed to scank a 100Mbit connection for a while) server for 5 years.
My guess is that it depends on how desperate the uni is for bandwidth as to how desperate it is to stop the students enjoying the (illegal) fruits of a good connection. And little to do with the legality or otherwise of the hosted traffic
I'm in civil engineering research and we do most of our stuff (mainly Finite Element Analysis) in Fortran (95) as it provides a nice bridge between the more mathsey Matlab, etc and the more hardcore c++,etc. It does pretty much everything I need it for.
The trouble with most accademic programming is that once the app is programmed, in whatever language, the results need to be visualised. In Matlab (and nodoubt other similar) Visualisation is relatively straightforward, giving good results quickly and easily. Wheras Fortrans graphics options are very limited and vairly complex, so it is easier to use an external visualiser, like AVS Express, which is very powerful, and makes viewing 3D data a doddle.
The UK will pay a high price in than high electric costs when it uglifies it's landscapes with windmills and it's shores with tideal generators.
Much of the proposed wind energy will come from large offshore sites in terratorial water, (Rockall is not only useful for cod fishing;-) which will be only barely visable from the shore. The UK (and ireland) are well endowed with wind an wave energy and consiquenlty are in an almost unique possition to be able to take good adavantage of the excess power while the technology is still young and inefficient. As this Government Consultation [pdf] points out.
Wave power schemes are idealy suited for incorperation with the offshore wind, as the infrastructure is there, and they would also provide some protection for the turbines in such a harsh environment.
As for tidal generators, such as the Severn barrage, the visual impact of the scheme would be minimal when compared to a bridge (which these projects usually incorporate). Though they have some environmental issues they are easily comparable to those of hydro schemes e.g..
Besides I would much rather look out on a wind farm than a gas platform or coal power plant, knowing that I was breathing clean fresh air.
In my (limited) knowledge of serious internet piracy (40Gb+ a day) in which 'release groups' distribute the latest rips of films and music. The only way this is possible is over, at the bare minimum, a 10Mbit connection, which unless you want to shell out an awefull lot of cash, is only practicaly available to Uni students (and maybe sysadmin in larger companies). Concequently the majority of these high volume sites are run by students.
At this rate of data you are getting ~600hrs of music or ~ 55hrs of film per day (~25hrs/hr and 2hrs/hr respectively). Which is obviously totally impractical for personal watching/listening purposes (not to mention the storage issues). The motivation for the release groups and sites is that they want to be seen as 'l33t' and get the releases of whatever it is they are interested in the fastest. Most of the stuff I dare say is deleted without even being reviewed.
My point, is that taking each student to court, especially those putting a couple of songs on a website is futile. If they encouraged the Uni sysadmin to run a few more bandwidth checks they would take out the problem at source (I dare say it's not hard to spot when one IP takes up several percent of the whole universities usage).
But don't tell them that, I like watching futurama before it's aired;-)
(I dare say 40GB a day is not the amount traded by the largest sites, but it gives a ball park, for most uni scale operations)
Good for cult worship, fairs, etc but not much use for concerts as the're too flat, by definition....Unless you have your band playing on an elavated stage, inclined toward the audiance (as some stages are). For an audiance on the flat though I guess it would be too steep to be practical (Mic stands falling over, drums roling into crowd,etc) Natural amphitheatres are the way forward...or has someone already thought of that?
Centrifugal force is the one that pulls muppets to the side of the car round corners Centripetal is the one that pulls on the as of those in the know, in order that they actually get round it.
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Diamonds are a geeks best friend.
Who designed the Tacoma Narrows bridge? The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkway? The De Havilland Comet 1? The Ocean Ranger oil rig? The L'Ambiance Plaza in Bridgeport, Connecticut? Pre-Challenger solid rocket boosters? Hubble space telescope optics? The Cypress Structure (collapsed in 1989 Loma Prieta eauthquake)?
I knew I should have put a caveat in there
Ok 99.99999% reliable. In most of the cases you mention the reason for failure was encountering a novel method of failure, that hadn't been seen before which is quite rightly the engineers fault for not anticipating it or basic human error which will happen in any situation, but should still be designed against by the good engineer.
Tacoma Narrows bridge - One of first examples of resonance in a large structure caused by wind. Regency hotel Walkway - Predominantly human error in communication coupled with a poor engineering decision Ocean Ranger rig - Engineering design coupled with human incompetance and poor safety routines. DeHavilland Comet- New intensity of cyclic stress strain loading in 1st commercial jet plane.L'ambiance Plaza Generally poor design in a (fairly) new technique.Rocket boostersDesign and checking failure on a massively complex project, obviously pushing the boundries. Hubble optics Not realy in the same catagory, but poor checking procedure, again pushing the envelope.Cypress StructureOver zealous engineers working to code, in an environment they didn't realy understand. Also a relatively novel construction when built.
I know it's not an excuse to say 'we didn't know it worked like that we'll do it better next time'. Compared to the number of structures built the number of failures is very small, engineers have a high level of training to keep it that way. It's a shame that (in the UK at least) we tend to sell our services cheap which doesn't reflect on the importance and responcibilty that we have. When individual code monkeys can get sued for the money a company lost due to there poor code, then they'll make themselves into engineers.
...who also does a bit of coding (parallel Fortran mainly) I'd like to argue that code monkeys ain't engineers. There are two main reasons why:
1. It takes a lot of effort to train as an engineer - I've spent 4yrs studying hard, and will need another 3/4yrs on site training before I get to be a qualified engineer. And when/if I get there I'll be responsible for designing things that won't fall down/blowup/wobble/burst into flames/etc, on my head be it if I kill a few hundred people. It only takes a small amount of knowledge and experience to start writing good code, as the environment in which you are working is so constrained. Proper (good) engineers have to take into consideration a much wider range of problems to come up with a design that works.
2. The product of an engineers work is totally reliable - How many of the people reading this article right now, are worried about the floor they are supported by or the roof above them falling in? Compare that to the number of you that would not at all be surprised if the code they were currently running suddenly fell apart.
Engineers do try to limit there market, and are fiercly proud of there title, in my opinion rightly so
Saving more pennies and flying to Silicon Valley for the weekend isn't as much fun as it once was, unless you want tons of surplus computer stuff.
computer stuff or staff?
:o)
Why not put a few small wind turbines on the car roof to power the car.
Then the faster you go the more power you get to drive the car ;o)
True, the only chance of us detecting them is if they are either, in the same (short) period of technology as us, where they use vastly powerful electomagnetic radiation to transfer low bandwidth data over great distances. Or they are deliberatly trying to contact other life around 'suitable' star systems, which if they are anything like us then they will be doing.
The former would be quite difficult to find as there is such a small window to look in, requiring a seti style programme. Wheras the latter should be alot easier to find, assuming they are vulcanesque and using logical frequencies and patterns to try and communicate. This should only require a single good detector that cycled round looking at the most appropriate local star systems in the most likely spectrums. ASSUMING they are doing the same with a signal the two should meet up eventually...
Yeh, but at a millisecond a day your going to have to wait 100x60x5 yrs for it.
By which time /.s latest business model will be a (subscriber) service that actually gets stories from the future :o)
From my experiance of 2 UK uni's. One had a fairly strict (and low) bandwidth cap of about 1Gb/day and the other was totally lax, allowing a friend of mine to run a 40Gb/day (higher when he managed to scank a 100Mbit connection for a while) server for 5 years.
My guess is that it depends on how desperate the uni is for bandwidth as to how desperate it is to stop the students enjoying the (illegal) fruits of a good connection. And little to do with the legality or otherwise of the hosted traffic
I'm in civil engineering research and we do most of our stuff (mainly Finite Element Analysis) in Fortran (95) as it provides a nice bridge between the more mathsey Matlab, etc and the more hardcore c++,etc. It does pretty much everything I need it for.
The trouble with most accademic programming is that once the app is programmed, in whatever language, the results need to be visualised. In Matlab (and nodoubt other similar) Visualisation is relatively straightforward, giving good results quickly and easily. Wheras Fortrans graphics options are very limited and vairly complex, so it is easier to use an external visualiser, like AVS Express, which is very powerful, and makes viewing 3D data a doddle.
The UK will pay a high price in than high electric costs when it uglifies it's landscapes with windmills and it's shores with tideal generators.
Much of the proposed wind energy will come from large offshore sites in terratorial water, (Rockall is not only useful for cod fishing;-) which will be only barely visable from the shore. The UK (and ireland) are well endowed with wind an wave energy and consiquenlty are in an almost unique possition to be able to take good adavantage of the excess power while the technology is still young and inefficient. As this Government Consultation [pdf] points out.
Wave power schemes are idealy suited for incorperation with the offshore wind, as the infrastructure is there, and they would also provide some protection for the turbines in such a harsh environment.
As for tidal generators, such as the Severn barrage, the visual impact of the scheme would be minimal when compared to a bridge (which these projects usually incorporate). Though they have some environmental issues they are easily comparable to those of hydro schemes e.g..
Besides I would much rather look out on a wind farm than a gas platform or coal power plant, knowing that I was breathing clean fresh air.
In my (limited) knowledge of serious internet piracy (40Gb+ a day) in which 'release groups' distribute the latest rips of films and music. The only way this is possible is over, at the bare minimum, a 10Mbit connection, which unless you want to shell out an awefull lot of cash, is only practicaly available to Uni students (and maybe sysadmin in larger companies). Concequently the majority of these high volume sites are run by students.
;-)
At this rate of data you are getting ~600hrs of music or ~ 55hrs of film per day (~25hrs/hr and 2hrs/hr respectively). Which is obviously totally impractical for personal watching/listening purposes (not to mention the storage issues). The motivation for the release groups and sites is that they want to be seen as 'l33t' and get the releases of whatever it is they are interested in the fastest. Most of the stuff I dare say is deleted without even being reviewed.
My point, is that taking each student to court, especially those putting a couple of songs on a website is futile. If they encouraged the Uni sysadmin to run a few more bandwidth checks they would take out the problem at source (I dare say it's not hard to spot when one IP takes up several percent of the whole universities usage).
But don't tell them that,
I like watching futurama before it's aired
(I dare say 40GB a day is not the amount traded by the largest sites, but it gives a ball park, for most uni scale operations)
Good for cult worship, fairs, etc but not much use for concerts as the're too flat, by definition. ...Unless you have your band playing on an elavated stage, inclined toward the audiance (as some stages are). For an audiance on the flat though I guess it would be too steep to be practical (Mic stands falling over, drums roling into crowd,etc)
Natural amphitheatres are the way forward...or has someone already thought of that?
Centrifugal force is the one that pulls muppets to the side of the car round corners
Centripetal is the one that pulls on the as of those in the know, in order that they actually get round it.