Google the name, with MSDN as one of the search terms, land exactly on the appropriate MSDN page, read the format, check that I have the required headers, code the call and......then you look on StackOverflow to figure out why the call didn't work like you thought it would.
Um, Isn't that pretty much EXACTLY what I wrote above?
The thing is, at least 90% of the time the MSDN reference is sufficient, and when that is the case it is FAR faster than wading thru the duff on SO.
If you're willing to move her to Win7 and away from AOL software, why not just move her to Linux?
Because you misread what he posted.
He's not willing to do that due to the time involved. Its also an overkill solution to temporary problems, that could easily be handled with remote login capabilities as dozens of others have pointed out. Buying a new car because the ashtrays are full is seldom a good approach.
He is likely to have to spend far more time re-training on Linux than just fixing the problems via remote log in. I've moved my wife to Linux, she's in the same house and its still a lot of trouble re-teaching. You'd be surprised how resentful people can be when you foist totally new things on them when all they wanted was a tweak here or there. Yes, I prevented a great deal of virus and malware recovery hours, but I spent just more time training her on simple things about Linux that required he to relearn what she had learned over a lifetime of office work.
Often I know exactly what I am going for, which API I need, etc. Google the name, with MSDN as one of the search terms, land exactly on the appropriate MSDN page, read the format, check that I have the required headers, code the call and done.
Most of the time that is sufficient, and it is by far quicker than wading through someone elses verbiage, code samples, 37 replies, 35 of which are unhelpful, etc. etc. If you understand and use MSDN frequently, it quicker (by far) for the bulk of your needs.
Its only when it doesn't work out of the box that the Microsoft documentation becomes cumbersome and opaque. Then its off to SO. Only to find, in the vast majority of cases, that I misread or skimmed over some obscure off-hand remark in the MSDN page that made all the difference in the world.
What you get from MSDN must be read like a lawyer parsing the law books. Miss some casual reference and the whole API call fails. Or worse, it almost always works, but fails inexplicably on odd numbered Tuesdays.
Things also go missing. You will find something this week, only to find it missing with the next update to the website.
That said Microsoft documentation is still more extensive than most. I often start there then end up on Stackoverflow of one of the other sites for more lucid examples, and often find that problems with a particular feature not working as documented are common knowledge, except, apparently, to Microsoft.
And perhaps that will last just as long as it takes for one country to face defeat of its robots, whereupon a switch will be flipped and humans become a legitimate target for autonomous machines.
You abhor drone strikes now, wait till there is no human in the loop.
aimed at idiots who think they know what 'geeks' or 'educated people' are like
I knew people just about exactly like every character on that show while going through College. Yes, babbling in klingon to each other, and the whole 9 yards. The exaggeration in the show isn't all that great from what I remember.
Of course I knew regular PhDs as well. This show isn't about them.
What's the point of a manned ballistic fly-by? All the humans can do is operate some instruments for the brief period they're slingshotting around the planet.
Which of course is largely what was done on Apollo 8. The did a few orbits (10) of the moon, but it was basically a hardware proving mission. You have to start somewhere.
It would have been an incredibly uncomfortable journey in 70s or 80's with the equipment on hand at that time. They were thinking of using Apollo hardware. That didn't necessarily have to be mean JUST the capsule, because Skylab was a concurrent project, and it too was built out of the Apollo project in its early eays. Skylab was launched 14 May 1973, and it could have served as living space for a longer Mars mission.
But even Apollo plus Skylab would have been tight quarters for 800 days. Skylab was actually only occupied for 171 days and 13 hours during the three manned Skylab missions. I seriously doubt anyone could have remained sane, or that it could have carried enough food for a mission that long. Rotting corpses would be the least of the problems.
Agreed, except the bit about not saying NO to the President.
The board of the Federal Reserve are probably the closest equivalent. Pretty much immune to presidential meddling once appointed.
From Wiki:
As stipulated by the Banking Act of 1935, the President appoints the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; they must then be confirmed by the Senate and serve for 14 years. Once appointed, Governors may not be removed from office for their policy opinions. The chairman and vice-chairman are chosen by the President from among the sitting Governors for four-year terms; these appointments are also subject to Senate confirmation.
Technically it's not so much the "Library of Congress" as it is the "Librarian of Congress", a position appointed by the president,
With the Advice and Consent of the Senate. It is not clear that the Librarian answers to the President. Nor is it clear that the President can remove him.
I never envisioned a librarian making rules beyond, "keep quiet", "no reference checkouts", and fines for being overdue.
So. Among other oddities we can now cite the DMCA for making the LoC a regulatory agency!
Clearly Congress did not want this power to be in the hands of the Executive Branch. They wanted it out of control of any elected official. Their reasons for this are not exactly transparent, but I suspect money was exchanged.
Most of the DMCA deals with books, music, movies etc. That much seems sane for the Librarian to handle.
But cell phones only fell under the DMCA due to the necessity to circumvent encryption to bypass carriers locks. This is clearly a tangential area for the Library, and anytime a manufacturer wants to invoke the DMCA simply encrypting some vaguely necessary key is all that is needed.
The librarian, with no prior powers of doing anything beyond sushing patrons, is now a quasi-legislative body, which is clearly beyond the scope of tine institution.
This whole thing could be circumvented by the FCC making rules stating that carrier locked phones may not be imported or sold after some date. Other countries have done this, and it works fine.
Every valid reason for carrier locks on a phone are obsolete. Carriers can kill IMEIs of stolen phones (including customers who walk away without satisfying their contract on a subsidized phone).
But the cost of such a distribution system might exceed the 10 percent loss in the current system. Especially when you consider the need for exotic materials.
And 10 percent is the average today, but that could be reduced by piping gas closer to the high electric consumption areas rather than pushing electrons down the current lines. The gas pipe line would have less loss, might be cheaper, even adding in the cost of a new gas plant. It would reduce grid dependency while leaving the grid in place.
Yeah, If I was sitting in the ISS, I'd want my guys in control too. Still, you have to wonder who would be better at flying this thing, the guys who built and designed it, or guys from NASA?
Actually TFA said "Dragon is the only station freighter that makes return trips", but that doesn't necessarily mean reusability.
The SpaceX site claims it is reusable, but I don't know if it actually has been reused to date. The last picture on the above linked page shows the condition of the returned vehicle. Its significantly crispy that it might be less expensive to simply build a new one. Especially for manned missions coming later.
Where do you get your ideas that blowing up a giant rock is a good idea. I'm talking giant, because the smaller ones, while being a problem for whoever's head they land on, don't pose an Extinction Level Event.
Maybe because the full rock DOES pose an extinction event?
And you might also want to look up the definition of "burn up in the atmosphere". And also you might want to supply some actual backup about your claim that they will have the same basic trajectory after a nuclear warhead scatters the big rock into much smaller pieces. Placed close to center, at least half the rock would get a significant retro acceleration. Another significant portion gets a forward acceleration. When you do this early enough there is no reason to suppose that all the parts have the same basic trajectory.
Even if a significant portion did stay on their collision course, they would be spread out, and the shitload of smaller ones represents a far less deadly potential than one giant big one. Because small ones burn up in the atmosphere.
I think you may need to consider feasibility when coming up with your plans. It's a lot easier to just fly somewhere and hover than to land, or to make and deploy a gigantic asteroid net.
And its a lot easier to fly somewhere close and send in a rocket powered Bunker Buster bomb.
Most of the rocky bodies we've investigated and photographed are loose creations of material which would most likely burn up in the atmosphere if you simply spread them out a bit. Even a solid rock of extinction size would do less damage if you break it up into more than one piece, and in doing so deflect significant chunks of it such that they would not even hit the earth. 2/3rds of the remaining pieces would land in the oceans as widely dispersed smaller chunks.
In other words, the entire premise of trying to finesse a miss by micromanaging the orbit doesn't put you in any better position than going nuclear. Because you have to have a great deal of time to change the orbit, the ability to predict future orbits, and technology of sufficient size and durability to actually be able to work, and if it fails you still have to have a plan "B". And waiting for a gravity solution to work would mean Plan B, would be a point blank nuclear strike.
The blowing things up bit, while sounding crass and inelegant, is actually the more sensible approach. Do it early, (preferably years in advance) evaluate your results, have another delivery vehicle pre-deployed for a later intercept, rinse, repeat until everything is smaller than a house, then simply take your chances.
Playing with orbit adjustments is an exercise in hubris.
TFA pretty much covers this, saying they believe it is a problem in the flash memory.
The computer problem is related to a glitch in flash memory on the A-side computer caused by corrupted memory files, Cook said. Scientists are still looking into the root cause the corrupted memory, but it's possible the memory files were damaged by high-energy space particles called cosmic rays, which are always a danger beyond the protective atmosphere of Earth.
They also say
"We also want to look to see if we can make changes to software to immunize against this kind of problem in the future," Cook said.
It seems that, since the same thing happened on one of the earlier rovers, this is something they would have done some time ago.
They are now updating the B side computer so it can manage the mission while they work on the primary. I wonder why this is not something that is kept up to date anyway. I can see keeping B an update or two behind A to prevent a single programming error taking both of them down. But after you are satisfied with A's software load, why keep B so far back-level that transition takes so much time. And since the computers are said to be identical, why the desire to move back to A?
Slashdot Mirror
That's hardly an excuse for writing sparse and opaque documentation.
Google the name, with MSDN as one of the search terms, land exactly on the appropriate MSDN page, read the format, check that I have the required headers, code the call and... ...then you look on StackOverflow to figure out why the call didn't work like you thought it would.
Um, Isn't that pretty much EXACTLY what I wrote above?
The thing is, at least 90% of the time the MSDN reference is sufficient, and when that is the case it is FAR faster than wading thru the duff on SO.
If you're willing to move her to Win7 and away from AOL software, why not just move her to Linux?
Because you misread what he posted.
He's not willing to do that due to the time involved. Its also an overkill solution to temporary problems, that could easily be handled with remote login
capabilities as dozens of others have pointed out. Buying a new car because the ashtrays are full is seldom a good approach.
He is likely to have to spend far more time re-training on Linux than just fixing the problems via remote log in. I've moved my wife to Linux, she's in the same house and its still a lot of trouble re-teaching. You'd be surprised how resentful people can be when you foist totally new things on them when all they wanted was a tweak here or there. Yes, I prevented a great deal of virus and malware recovery hours, but I spent just more time training her on simple things about Linux that required he to relearn what she had learned over a lifetime of office work.
Mmmmm, no. Not in my experience.
Often I know exactly what I am going for, which API I need, etc. Google the name, with MSDN as one of the search terms, land exactly on the appropriate MSDN page, read the format, check that I have the required headers, code the call and done.
Most of the time that is sufficient, and it is by far quicker than wading through someone elses verbiage, code samples, 37 replies, 35 of which are unhelpful, etc. etc.
If you understand and use MSDN frequently, it quicker (by far) for the bulk of your needs.
Its only when it doesn't work out of the box that the Microsoft documentation becomes cumbersome and opaque. Then its off to SO. Only to find, in the vast majority of cases, that I misread or skimmed over some obscure off-hand remark in the MSDN page that made all the difference in the world.
Lots of truth to this.
What you get from MSDN must be read like a lawyer parsing the law books.
Miss some casual reference and the whole API call fails. Or worse, it almost always works, but
fails inexplicably on odd numbered Tuesdays.
Things also go missing. You will find something this week, only to find it missing with the next update to the website.
That said Microsoft documentation is still more extensive than most. I often start there then end up on Stackoverflow
of one of the other sites for more lucid examples, and often find that problems with a particular feature not working
as documented are common knowledge, except, apparently, to Microsoft.
And perhaps that will last just as long as it takes for one country to face defeat of its robots, whereupon a switch will be flipped and humans become a legitimate target for autonomous machines.
You abhor drone strikes now, wait till there is no human in the loop.
aimed at idiots who think they know what 'geeks' or 'educated people' are like
I knew people just about exactly like every character on that show while going through College.
Yes, babbling in klingon to each other, and the whole 9 yards. The exaggeration in the show isn't all
that great from what I remember.
Of course I knew regular PhDs as well. This show isn't about them.
What's the point of a manned ballistic fly-by? All the humans can do is operate some instruments for the brief period they're slingshotting around the planet.
Which of course is largely what was done on Apollo 8. The did a few orbits (10) of the moon, but it was basically a hardware proving mission.
You have to start somewhere.
Burial in space.
Same as you do at sea.
It would have been an incredibly uncomfortable journey in 70s or 80's with the equipment on hand at that time.
They were thinking of using Apollo hardware. That didn't necessarily have to be mean JUST the capsule, because Skylab was a concurrent project, and it too was built out of the Apollo project in its early eays. Skylab was launched 14 May 1973, and it could have served as living space for a longer Mars mission.
But even Apollo plus Skylab would have been tight quarters for 800 days. Skylab was actually only occupied for 171 days and 13 hours during the three manned Skylab missions. I seriously doubt anyone could have remained sane, or that it could have carried enough food for a mission that long.
Rotting corpses would be the least of the problems.
Agreed, except the bit about not saying NO to the President.
The board of the Federal Reserve are probably the closest equivalent. Pretty much immune to presidential meddling once appointed.
From Wiki:
As stipulated by the Banking Act of 1935, the President appoints the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; they must then be confirmed by the Senate and serve for 14 years. Once appointed, Governors may not be removed from office for their policy opinions. The chairman and vice-chairman are chosen by the President from among the sitting Governors for four-year terms; these appointments are also subject to Senate confirmation.
Technically it's not so much the "Library of Congress" as it is the "Librarian of Congress", a position appointed by the president,
With the Advice and Consent of the Senate.
It is not clear that the Librarian answers to the President. Nor is it clear that the President can remove him.
I had to rub my eyes there for a minute, but apparently the DMCA puts exemptions in the hands of the Librarian
I never envisioned a librarian making rules beyond, "keep quiet", "no reference checkouts", and fines for being overdue.
So. Among other oddities we can now cite the DMCA for making the LoC a regulatory agency!
Clearly Congress did not want this power to be in the hands of the Executive Branch. They wanted it out of control of any elected official.
Their reasons for this are not exactly transparent, but I suspect money was exchanged.
Most of the DMCA deals with books, music, movies etc. That much seems sane for the Librarian to handle.
But cell phones only fell under the DMCA due to the necessity to circumvent encryption to bypass carriers locks. This is clearly
a tangential area for the Library, and anytime a manufacturer wants to invoke the DMCA simply encrypting some vaguely necessary key
is all that is needed.
The librarian, with no prior powers of doing anything beyond sushing patrons, is now a quasi-legislative body, which is clearly beyond the
scope of tine institution.
This whole thing could be circumvented by the FCC making rules stating that carrier locked phones may not be imported or sold after
some date. Other countries have done this, and it works fine.
Every valid reason for carrier locks on a phone are obsolete. Carriers can kill IMEIs of stolen phones (including customers who walk away without satisfying their contract on a subsidized phone).
You guys left college and formed iRobot and built Roomba floor sweepers, right?
It sort of navigated by knock as well.
But the cost of such a distribution system might exceed the 10 percent loss in the current system. Especially when you consider the need for exotic materials.
And 10 percent is the average today, but that could be reduced by piping gas closer to the high electric consumption areas rather than pushing electrons down the current lines. The gas pipe line would have less loss, might be cheaper, even adding in the cost of a new gas plant. It would reduce grid dependency while leaving the grid in place.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003223.html
Yeah, If I was sitting in the ISS, I'd want my guys in control too.
Still, you have to wonder who would be better at flying this thing, the guys who built and designed it, or guys from NASA?
Actually TFA said "Dragon is the only station freighter that makes return trips", but that doesn't necessarily mean reusability.
The SpaceX site claims it is reusable, but I don't know if it actually has been reused to date.
The last picture on the above linked page shows the condition of the returned vehicle. Its significantly crispy that it might be less expensive
to simply build a new one. Especially for manned missions coming later.
There is a comparison of cargo vehicle on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_space_station_cargo_vehicles
None mention re-useability explicitly.
Don't feed the trolls. Do us all a favor. Drag that slider to the left so that you don't even see -1 posts.
Does every incident in the real world need a reference to a TV show?
Are you sure you can't find an XKCD comic that would be more appropriate?
Where do you get your ideas that blowing up a giant rock is a good idea. I'm talking giant, because the smaller ones, while being a problem for whoever's head they land on, don't pose an Extinction Level Event.
Maybe because the full rock DOES pose an extinction event?
And you might also want to look up the definition of "burn up in the atmosphere". And also you might want to supply some actual backup about your claim that they will have the same basic trajectory after a nuclear warhead scatters the big rock into much smaller pieces. Placed close to center, at least half the rock would get a significant retro acceleration. Another significant portion gets a forward acceleration. When you do this early enough there is no reason to suppose that all the parts have the same basic trajectory.
Even if a significant portion did stay on their collision course, they would be spread out, and the shitload of smaller ones represents a far less deadly potential than one giant big one. Because small ones burn up in the atmosphere.
If your scenario were real, then why are the updating B at this point?
Clearly they are satisfied with that A was running before the memory fritz.
They sent the update once, didn't they?
Wait till you are satisfied it worked, and shunt it over to computer B.
I think you may need to consider feasibility when coming up with your plans. It's a lot easier to just fly somewhere and hover than to land, or to make and deploy a gigantic asteroid net.
And its a lot easier to fly somewhere close and send in a rocket powered Bunker Buster bomb.
Most of the rocky bodies we've investigated and photographed are loose creations of material which would most likely burn up in the atmosphere if you simply spread them out a bit. Even a solid rock of extinction size would do less damage if you break it up into more than one piece, and in doing so deflect significant chunks of it such that they would not even hit the earth. 2/3rds of the remaining pieces would land in the oceans as widely dispersed smaller chunks.
In other words, the entire premise of trying to finesse a miss by micromanaging the orbit doesn't put you in any better position than going nuclear. Because you have to have a great deal of time to change the orbit, the ability to predict future orbits, and technology of sufficient size and durability to actually be able to work, and if it fails you still have to have a plan "B". And waiting for a gravity solution to work would mean Plan B, would be a point blank nuclear strike.
The blowing things up bit, while sounding crass and inelegant, is actually the more sensible approach. Do it early, (preferably years in advance) evaluate your results, have another delivery vehicle pre-deployed for a later intercept, rinse, repeat until everything is smaller than a house, then simply take your chances.
Playing with orbit adjustments is an exercise in hubris.
Anyway 13" laptop sceens are a joke for doing anything serious, 17"+ laptop screens are the One True Answer :-)
17" laptop screens are not laptop screens.
If it weighs more than 2Kg it's not a laptop.
Nonsense. Defining the weight limit for a laptop is above your pay grade.
17 is quite nice for a laptop, even when most people use them as table tops most of the time.
Who else has a feeling that someone fitted in a module backwards?
Either that, or a dead cell or two.
Nobody who has read TFA has that feeling. Curiosity has been running since Aug. 6, 2012 on your putative "backwards module".
TFA pretty much covers this, saying they believe it is a problem in the flash memory.
The computer problem is related to a glitch in flash memory on the A-side computer caused by corrupted memory files, Cook said. Scientists are still looking into the root cause the corrupted memory, but it's possible the memory files were damaged by high-energy space particles called cosmic rays, which are always a danger beyond the protective atmosphere of Earth.
They also say
"We also want to look to see if we can make changes to software to immunize against this kind of problem in the future," Cook said.
It seems that, since the same thing happened on one of the earlier rovers, this is something they would have done some time ago.
They are now updating the B side computer so it can manage the mission while they work on the primary. I wonder why this is not something that is kept up to date anyway. I can see keeping B an update or two behind A to prevent a single programming error taking both of them down. But after you are satisfied with A's software load, why keep B so far back-level that transition takes so much time. And since the computers are said to be identical, why the desire to move back to A?