Forgive me for commenting on something I know next to nothing about, but would you actually be able to work with titanium the way you work with whatever you normally use (I assume steel)? I believe Parker (the pen company) had to cancel their titanium pen (the T-1) in the early 1970s because it was too difficult to work with. They only made it for a few months and the surviving ones trade hands for around a thousand bucks these days.
Collins would not have been at the yoke of the Discovery, as the Discovery is not equipped with a yoke, but rather a stick.
Maybe a pilot can explain it better than I can, but the difference is somewhat like this: a yoke has two different types of motion: you can rotate it like a steering wheel, and you can push/pull it. A stick is like the video game joysticks we all know and love. The shuttle is flown with the latter when under human control (although it's still connected via a digital fly-by-wire system).
If you look at pictures of the shuttle cockpit, you can clearly see a stick there. I suggest comparing the cockpit interiors of Boeing and Airbus (except the A300) commercial jets on airliners.net for an illustration of the differences.
Which is why I'm going to go out and build one of these. No sense in having my $90 (no CostCo here) A/C unit confiscated by bureaucrats. Let them pay for the extra utility costs of an ice-based system. The fridge is not in my room.
This has probably been mentioned elsewhere, but, curiously, you mention keeping the plane within the flight envelope as one of the missions of FBW design. Boeing (which produces several FBW a/c, perhaps the best known of which is the 777) has long been vocal about its philosophy of permitting emergency pilot commands that exceed the manufacturer's limits, on the grounds that the pilot always knows best.
This means allowing, among other things, extreme control inputs at high speeds that could in principle damage the airframe (see AA587), and "daring" maneuvers such as high bank angles.
Both the Boeing (pilot knows best) and Airbus (smart computer keeps you safe) philosophies have their merits; unlike the planes for which FBW was developed - ultra-maneuverable fighters with inherently unstable aerodynamics - the advantages of total computer control for passenger jets are harder to justify in absolute terms.
IMHO cars will not do "drive by wire" any time soon. It makes sense on a plane, where upwards of 90% of a flight is conducted with hands off the stick and power levers. It makes only limited sense in a car (stability control and ABS are some cases where a computer has an advantage).
The first Airbus 330 crashed on its maiden flight due (IIRC) to an autopilot error leading to loss of control on the initial climb. Airbus lost some very valuable personnel in that crash.
Flight testing is risky; part of the point is to discover and correct design flaws that might be considered a safety problem. Airbus is not the only one to have had fatalities during initial testing; Bombardier had a fatal crash in the 90s during a test flight. You should be glad the engineers are willing to risk their own lives before putting the plane into service.
I didn't know there was a/home directory. My system has/Users/[username]. Nor did I know there was a/swap directory. I guess there's a lot of shit going on under the hood that I wasn't aware of?
Anyway, so I guess what I'm missing is that FV doesn't protect swap. Talk about false sense of security.
It's always amusing to hear people who are obviously fairly young use the phrase "when I was young" or "many years ago". Do you mean "way back in the first GWB administration"? Maybe even "way WAY back in the Clinton era"?
To be fair, I'm guilty of using the phrase for the Clinton era as well (and I'm probably not much older than you). It just seems so damm long ago.
My guideline: if it involves the internet intruding on daily life, it doesn't qualify for "way back when"-type phrases.
> As for the third class medical certificate required for Private Pilots, I really don't see what the big deal is. If you have a pulse and can see three feet in front of you can easily obtain one. Perhaps it is the cost? ($80)
Think again. Check out the FAA web site for the list of medically disqualifying conditions. There are plenty of meds that you can't legally take and exercise the privs of your private pilot certficate, but don't impact your ability to safely pilot an aircraft.
Thank you for responding to this disinformation. Try taking any common antidepressant (Prozac, Zoloft, etc) or anti-ADD medication (Ritalin, Adderall) or having any minor ear condition. The FAA is (as far as I know) unique in its irrational fear of antidepressant drugs. If you're American, you can't transport your wife and kids in your privately owned Cessna 182 if you take Zoloft, but antidepressant taking ATP pilots can fly 747s loaded with pax all day long in other countries (and rightly so, IMO).
Just google for "moonies" for some even juicier information.
Re:Somebody explain this to me?
on
Amorphous Steel
·
· Score: 1
Glassy steel knives wouldn't do this. You could literally pour yourself a knife in a mold and have a never-dulling knife -- assuming you don't drop it.:-)
My dad has owned a ceramic kitchen knife for about 18 years now. It took a long time, but it's definitely not as sharp now as it was when he got it (in fact it's more like a ceramic letter opener at this point).
I imagine a glass steel knife would perform similarly, but IANA mechanical engineer.
But what about comprehending MEANING? Computers these days can easily understand the difference between "pepperoni" and "green peppers" when ordering your pizza, but they don't really associate any MEANING to them beyond what we tell them.
You seem to have a confused idea of meaning. First of all, computers have nothing to do with this. Second, you're overlooking something fundamental about meaning, although you pretty much state it openly.
You compared a computer's obedience to a dog's obedience. Fine. They both react in an apparently senseless yet predictable manner to certain stimuli that we have programmed them to recognize. But a computer 'thinks' with a set of abstract rules that humans have defined and implemented electronically in an organized fashion. A dog's mind, on the other hand, doesn't care how we think - its thought processes depend in no way upon our own, except insofar as they might have evolved under similar circumstances and might possibly share common mechanisms. So the debate about AI has no bearing on whether other biological organisms are sentient.
I'm not saying this dog is amazing, but I would guess humans still have A LOT more brain power underneath the basic understanding of a word.
Since when did relative brain power have anything to do with the presence of meaning? Brain power may help when trying to understand extremely sophisticated concepts, but even pretty feeble minded people are just as conscious of certain meanings as us ubermen who troll on/.
If I say "ball" to the dog, he'd probably recognize his tennis ball. If a 3 year old learns about a tennis ball, then sees a beach ball, most of them will say "BIG BALL!" whereas I bet the dog wouldn't know what the heck that thing is.
Once again you're confusing two different issues. The toddler is exercising creativity and making abstract associations. The dog (supposedly) can't do this. But,
1) The dog still recognizes the ball, which as far as most people are concerned counts as understanding what "ball" means, and
2) The dog in question did in fact make use of abstract associations when it identified a new object among many familiar objects (it associated the new toy with the new word without prompting).
In short, humans may still be #1. But not for the so-called reasons you cited.
There is a boot.iso, burn it, boot it, install from ftp
Whatever... I've tried that on three different machines (two homebuilt, one Dell) and in no case was there a usable Ethernet driver (or whatever they're called in the Linux world). Apparently if you don't have one of the 10 most common (as determined by Suse) Ethernet chips, you have to find an appropriate driver yourself.
Maybe this isn't such a big deal if you're fairly Linux savvy and have an extra machine to dick around on the internet with and you don't mind wasting time and a lot of blank CDs while trying to find the right driver, but burn, boot, install? You left out about six steps.
IIRC, the D-21 (Tagboard drone) is (was) slightly faster, but
(a) it's a ramjet, so maybe not fair to group together with SR-71, (b) it requires a piggyback ride on an A-12 (SR-71) or rocket booster to get started, and it can't land in a non-destructive fashion; and (c) it doesn't have a human pilot.
So maybe fastest jet driven plane depends on your definition of "plane".
Oh god, please not Ed Stroglio. That guy is a clueless idiot. I used to read that site for the cooling fetish stuff, but I had to stop because his woefully misinformed opinions, coupled with his unbelievably bad writing, made me want to claw my eyes out.
Why don't you give us a quote from Rob Enderle instead? At least he's sort of famous.
At the school I attend, there's an old 90 mhz PowerMac prominently on display in a public area, with a big sign "this power mac has been given new life through Gentoo Linux". Some smaller text follows, describing the exciting scientific application it's running that you can watch in real time.
The funny thing about it is that 80% of the time, the desktop looks mangled and the only thing legible is a couple of KDE error popups.
Windows isn't the only desktop to embarrass itself in public.
Tell me why you need a 300 meg install for a word processor, spell-check feature and some rtf formatting? anyone?............. didn't think so.
Because some people use more than just the spell-check feature and rtf formatting!
It really depends on what department you work in. Those of us who have to deal with people and words in our jobs (because we don't know how to code) often do make use of a lot of the "useless" features in M$ word. Speaking for myself, I have probably made use of 90% of the functions at some point in my working life, and I use about 35% on a daily basis (which is more than most people, to be sure)
Why every single workstation at most companies has to have the full, multi-hundred-dollar install of MS office is a different question entirely. But then again, while we're at it let's talk about replacing the expensive P4 workstations with inexpensive AMD linux boxen, openoffice.org, blah blah and now you have a whole can of worms. Better just to keep your subversive thoughts to yourself and nod when the boss is talking.
And to make this somewhat on topic, this is bad news for me. I was going to get a stick of 512 for my iBook, and it looks like I should have gotten it before...
Slashdot Mirror
Forgive me for commenting on something I know next to nothing about, but would you actually be able to work with titanium the way you work with whatever you normally use (I assume steel)? I believe Parker (the pen company) had to cancel their titanium pen (the T-1) in the early 1970s because it was too difficult to work with. They only made it for a few months and the surviving ones trade hands for around a thousand bucks these days.
I refuse to use it until they Hextegrate it into their Epistemic PodCast(tm) Mindshare meta-search concept feature set.
Maybe a pilot can explain it better than I can, but the difference is somewhat like this: a yoke has two different types of motion: you can rotate it like a steering wheel, and you can push/pull it. A stick is like the video game joysticks we all know and love. The shuttle is flown with the latter when under human control (although it's still connected via a digital fly-by-wire system).
If you look at pictures of the shuttle cockpit, you can clearly see a stick there. I suggest comparing the cockpit interiors of Boeing and Airbus (except the A300) commercial jets on airliners.net for an illustration of the differences.
Which is why I'm going to go out and build one of these. No sense in having my $90 (no CostCo here) A/C unit confiscated by bureaucrats. Let them pay for the extra utility costs of an ice-based system. The fridge is not in my room.
Thank you, inkeystring.
This means allowing, among other things, extreme control inputs at high speeds that could in principle damage the airframe (see AA587), and "daring" maneuvers such as high bank angles.
Both the Boeing (pilot knows best) and Airbus (smart computer keeps you safe) philosophies have their merits; unlike the planes for which FBW was developed - ultra-maneuverable fighters with inherently unstable aerodynamics - the advantages of total computer control for passenger jets are harder to justify in absolute terms.
IMHO cars will not do "drive by wire" any time soon. It makes sense on a plane, where upwards of 90% of a flight is conducted with hands off the stick and power levers. It makes only limited sense in a car (stability control and ABS are some cases where a computer has an advantage).
Flight testing is risky; part of the point is to discover and correct design flaws that might be considered a safety problem. Airbus is not the only one to have had fatalities during initial testing; Bombardier had a fatal crash in the 90s during a test flight. You should be glad the engineers are willing to risk their own lives before putting the plane into service.
Sorry, this story is a hoax. 2 seconds of googling for "iraq printer virus" gets you an NYU page with all the background.
Anyway, so I guess what I'm missing is that FV doesn't protect swap. Talk about false sense of security.
(1) Filevault encrypts swap file, and
(2) Not using Filevault leaves your swap file and the rest of your home directory open to data theft
Am I missing something? It seems to me that this is a pointless upgrade.
Were you born without an appendix, by any chance?
I would think that distinction would go to XBox or PS2, since the GTA series wasn't really big when DC was still in production.
To be fair, I'm guilty of using the phrase for the Clinton era as well (and I'm probably not much older than you). It just seems so damm long ago.
My guideline: if it involves the internet intruding on daily life, it doesn't qualify for "way back when"-type phrases.
LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display.
Now that that's over with, you may resume posting without R'ing the FA.
1. People freak out when they don't see the "start" button. Ever tried suggesting a live CD to a non-nerd? "OMGOMG WILL IT MESS UP MY HARD DRIVE?"
2. Harder to foist needlessly complicated yet always crackable copy protection on consumers.
Thank you for responding to this disinformation. Try taking any common antidepressant (Prozac, Zoloft, etc) or anti-ADD medication (Ritalin, Adderall) or having any minor ear condition. The FAA is (as far as I know) unique in its irrational fear of antidepressant drugs. If you're American, you can't transport your wife and kids in your privately owned Cessna 182 if you take Zoloft, but antidepressant taking ATP pilots can fly 747s loaded with pax all day long in other countries (and rightly so, IMO).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/long term/cult/unification/wtimes.htm/
Just google for "moonies" for some even juicier information.
My dad has owned a ceramic kitchen knife for about 18 years now. It took a long time, but it's definitely not as sharp now as it was when he got it (in fact it's more like a ceramic letter opener at this point).
I imagine a glass steel knife would perform similarly, but IANA mechanical engineer.
I can't help wondering how this is connected to the free battleships and submarines that the US is giving away.
You seem to have a confused idea of meaning. First of all, computers have nothing to do with this. Second, you're overlooking something fundamental about meaning, although you pretty much state it openly.
You compared a computer's obedience to a dog's obedience. Fine. They both react in an apparently senseless yet predictable manner to certain stimuli that we have programmed them to recognize. But a computer 'thinks' with a set of abstract rules that humans have defined and implemented electronically in an organized fashion. A dog's mind, on the other hand, doesn't care how we think - its thought processes depend in no way upon our own, except insofar as they might have evolved under similar circumstances and might possibly share common mechanisms. So the debate about AI has no bearing on whether other biological organisms are sentient.
Since when did relative brain power have anything to do with the presence of meaning? Brain power may help when trying to understand extremely sophisticated concepts, but even pretty feeble minded people are just as conscious of certain meanings as us ubermen who troll on /.
Once again you're confusing two different issues. The toddler is exercising creativity and making abstract associations. The dog (supposedly) can't do this. But,
1) The dog still recognizes the ball, which as far as most people are concerned counts as understanding what "ball" means, and
2) The dog in question did in fact make use of abstract associations when it identified a new object among many familiar objects (it associated the new toy with the new word without prompting).
In short, humans may still be #1. But not for the so-called reasons you cited.
Whatever... I've tried that on three different machines (two homebuilt, one Dell) and in no case was there a usable Ethernet driver (or whatever they're called in the Linux world). Apparently if you don't have one of the 10 most common (as determined by Suse) Ethernet chips, you have to find an appropriate driver yourself.
Maybe this isn't such a big deal if you're fairly Linux savvy and have an extra machine to dick around on the internet with and you don't mind wasting time and a lot of blank CDs while trying to find the right driver, but burn, boot, install? You left out about six steps.
(a) it's a ramjet, so maybe not fair to group together with SR-71,
(b) it requires a piggyback ride on an A-12 (SR-71) or rocket booster to get started, and it can't land in a non-destructive fashion; and
(c) it doesn't have a human pilot.
So maybe fastest jet driven plane depends on your definition of "plane".
Why don't you give us a quote from Rob Enderle instead? At least he's sort of famous.
Thanks for dredging up some painful memories.
The funny thing about it is that 80% of the time, the desktop looks mangled and the only thing legible is a couple of KDE error popups.
Windows isn't the only desktop to embarrass itself in public.
Because some people use more than just the spell-check feature and rtf formatting!
It really depends on what department you work in. Those of us who have to deal with people and words in our jobs (because we don't know how to code) often do make use of a lot of the "useless" features in M$ word. Speaking for myself, I have probably made use of 90% of the functions at some point in my working life, and I use about 35% on a daily basis (which is more than most people, to be sure)
Why every single workstation at most companies has to have the full, multi-hundred-dollar install of MS office is a different question entirely. But then again, while we're at it let's talk about replacing the expensive P4 workstations with inexpensive AMD linux boxen, openoffice.org, blah blah and now you have a whole can of worms. Better just to keep your subversive thoughts to yourself and nod when the boss is talking.
And to make this somewhat on topic, this is bad news for me. I was going to get a stick of 512 for my iBook, and it looks like I should have gotten it before...
They should build a tunnel across the Bering Strait. Imagine how cool it would be to be able to take a road trip from Tierra del Fuego to Cape Town.