Who said it was a software only problem? The article suggests the flash memory may have been corrupted by cosmic rays, how do you protect against that? Redundancy. How redundant did they make it? Completely redundant (2 separate computer systems).
Plus no-one said that the A-side could never recover on its own (like what happened with Spirit), I'm sure it's just a lot easier to boot the redundant system and diagnose it from there.
Or do you have a better idea for how they could architected it?
However for ultra expensive spacefaring things I would expect it to be designed to still try and be useful even if the southbridge cought fire.
The computer on Curiosity is completely redundant and has switched over to the secondary computer, even if the primary computer has suffered fatal hardware failure the rover can continue to operate on the secondary. If that's not "being useful" after a failure I don't know what is!
I didn't say that you were guaranteed to be the exclusive winner, just that the odds of winning scale linearly so if you had every combination of ticket you were guaranteed to win. Obviously that doesn't mean your're the only winner, and unless theres been a big rollover it should cost more to buy every ticket then the jackpot is worth.
If the odds of winning are 1 in 1 million (round numbers are easier, and past about 1 in 1000 with 1000 tickets the odds are asymptotic anyway), then the chance of not finding a winning ticket in the first million tickets purchased is 36.8%. Which means you only have a 65.2% chance of winning with 1 million tickets and a 1 in 1 million chance on each ticket. Not even close to 100%.
Isn't that wrong because you're ignoring how lotteries usually operate, which is to pick a winning combination out of a limited set. For your example if the lottery ticket consists of a player chosen number from 000000 to 999999 and the winner is decided by picking a random number from 000000 to 999999, then there is a 1 in 1 million chance of a single ticket winning. However if you buy 1 million different tickets then you have every single possible combination, so your chance of winning is 100%.
Quite the assumption on alien life forms using radio waves, but I guess as a civilization we gotta start somewhere with the search. Or, we can follow the sci-fi model and colonize worlds UNTIL we find alien life. The latter makes more sense in a lot of ways.
One of these things we can do right now, the other hasn't even been proved to be humanly possible yet.
Well, given a thousand years or so we could probably dump enough asteroid material on it to bring the mass up.
Not sure where you'd get all that asteroid material from, as if you dumped the entire mass of the asteroid belt on Mars you'd only increase its mass by 0.5%.
The Kuipler belt is much more massive, maybe 10% the mass of Earth, but that's mainly frozen ices rather than rock.
This then suggests a simple fix for global warming - we just need to move Earth into a slightly higher orbit.
Nah, we could simply drop a giant ice-cube into the ocean every now and then. Of course since the greenhouse gasses are still building up it will take more and more ice each time, thus solving the problem once and for all!
Actually Apple are just spouting nonsense. The regulation does not ban unguarded fans, it splits fans into 3 categories based on whether they can cause "pain" or "injury". I actually read the regulation and did the math, apparently a 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe that it could be on the outside of the case with no protection and still be legal. Even the next category up can be unguarded on the inside as long as there's a warning label.
It ends when people actually get a clue about what the regulation says, rather than just listening to Apple's nonsense. The regulation does not ban unguarded fans, it splits fans into 3 categories based on whether they can cause "pain" or "injury". I actually read the regulation and did the math, apparently a 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe that it could be on the outside of the case with no protection and still be legal. Even the next category up can be unguarded on the inside as long as there's a warning label.
I can't see how any of the Mac Pro fans could possibly fail this, I can only think Apple are trying to deflect attention away from failing the electrical ports protection rules.
You really have to open up the case and want to stick your finger in there. Even if you would, these motors are low power. The potential injury would be minimal compared to a mixer. This makes no sense. Is the European Union turning into Fire Marshall Bill?
No it's not, because Apple is talking crap about the regulation. It only bans unguarded fans that are fast and heavy enough to cause injury. I actually read the regulation and did the math and found that a typical 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe it could be on the outside of the case with no guard and still be legal, so I can't imagine how any of the Mac Pro fans would fail it. Even the next fan category is legal to be unguarded on the inside as long as they put a warning sticker on it...
So if I understand the reg. in question, hardware with an internal fan (like a Mac Pro) that is only accessible if you pull the housing must have an internal fan guard? WTF? This makes no sense. For that matter that thing about minimum and max cord length is pretty wacked. Is there really a computer, or transistor radio, manufacturer out there who wanted to deliver 7-meter power cords?
It doesn't. It only bans unguarded fans that are fast and heavy enough to cause injury. I actually read the regulation and did the math and found that a typical 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe it could be on the outside of the case with no guard and still be legal, so I can't imagine how any of the Mac Pro fans would fail it.
but it is pretty much on-par with requiring fan guards on INTERNAL fans. At some point, governments (world-wide) have to understand that not everything, nor everyone, needs "protected", just because one stupid person went to the E.R. because they stuck their hand in a moving fan.
Except if you read the actual directive and do the math on fan speed/weight it seems unbelievable that any of the Mac Pro's fans would fail it.
The rules are NOT banning all unguarded fans, it only bans unguarded fans that would cause injury if touched.
As everyone's commenting how "retarded" this EU directive is without actually reading it I thought I'd find out exactly what it says, as it seemed strange that it would ban all unguarded internal fans.
Basically it appears fans are divided into 3 categories based on their diameter, fan blade speed and weight: a) Won't hurt if touched, b) Will hurt but won't injure if touched and c) Will injure if touched. Category a are fine anywhere, category b are ok in user serviceable areas as long as there's a warning sticker and category c fans can only be accessible to "service personnel". Seems pretty sensible for me.
Now I ran the numbers in the formula just to make sure they're not too strict and a fan with a 5cm blade radius and 100g weight going at 3000rpm (faster than the Mac Pro max rpm) is category a. Seriously a large case fan could be on the outside of the thing with no grill and still be legal.
Even if I've got the figures wrong for the Mac Pro's fans I can't imagine any of the fans being more than category b, which only requires a warning label. I can't help but think Apple are just using it as a PR excuse for failing the "electrical port protection" rules by trying to make the rules seem ridiculously strict.
Reading the patent this shouldn't apply to phone lock screens, the patent seems to be for a multi-factor unlock system that uses several different kind of user authorisation interactions (password followed by finger print scan followed by a gesture pattern for example), where mobile unlock screens are universally just a single action.
If this patent actually covered mobile phone unlock screens then it would also cover screen-saver wake passwords etc.
The Airbus also suffered from manufacturing problems as the German and Spanish facilities were using a different version of the CATIA CAD tool than the English and French facilities. This resulted in hilarity when modules from different locations did not mate as intended.
I don't see how making an initial bespoke prototype would have helped with this. An initial custom made part would have been made exactly to design and therefore perfect; the problems at the factory would only have come to light once the production line was tooled and running.
No, the problem wasn't no specs. The problem was that the system was designed on paper first, without actually building it. Then the specs for the individual pieces were created, and those individual modules were built from the specs. The idea was that then the parts were completed, they would be integrated and work perfectly together. Of course, that never happens because when the pieces come together for the first time, unanticipated problems occur. This is why early integration [ibm.com] is a good idea and is part of the philosophy of release early, release often [wikipedia.org].
Isn't that how all modern airliners are created? I'm trying to remember a documentary about the development of the A380, IIRC the entire thing was designed in CAD, the factories were then tooled and the first plane was created from parts from the same production line as the production run would come from.
Now it's a little different with Airbus as they manufactured most parts in their own factories, but I can't see how it would be economically practical to create a completely bespoke prototype aeroplane of the size and complexity of the 787, and even if they did the custom made parts are likely to differ slightly from the parts that eventually role off production. You certainly can't apply "release early, release often" software development methodologies to giant manufacturing projects like this!
If they did (b1) or (b2) above, especially if they didn't get the permission of every IP address which they probed/tested, then aren't they doing illegal penetration testing, even if all they are doing is checking for the existence of a responding port?
Would it be illegal though? For example how would it be illegal to scan port 80 on every public IP address?
If, by accident, I discover they are failing to do so and I inform them of the problem, then I have an obligation to myself and all other facebook users to ensure the problem has been corrected.
But does that give you the right to test their site for all other possible vulnerabilities using a penetration tool without asking them?
That's not what he did tho, he ran a broad spectrum penetration test on the website. That's quite different to verifying that the specific vulnerability he found had been fixed.
Expulsion may uncalled for, but it's not like he's some blameless victim; he did a foolish thing by doing that without contacting them first.
Shame it's completely wrong, the window belongs to Omnivox. A better analogy would be that he noticed Omnivox had left their window open and told them, to which they thanked him. He then goes back 2 days later with a crowbar (Acunetix) to test whether they'd locked their windows properly yet.
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Who said it was a software only problem? The article suggests the flash memory may have been corrupted by cosmic rays, how do you protect against that? Redundancy. How redundant did they make it? Completely redundant (2 separate computer systems).
Plus no-one said that the A-side could never recover on its own (like what happened with Spirit), I'm sure it's just a lot easier to boot the redundant system and diagnose it from there.
Or do you have a better idea for how they could architected it?
However for ultra expensive spacefaring things I would expect it to be designed to still try and be useful even if the southbridge cought fire.
The computer on Curiosity is completely redundant and has switched over to the secondary computer, even if the primary computer has suffered fatal hardware failure the rover can continue to operate on the secondary. If that's not "being useful" after a failure I don't know what is!
The iPad 2 Smart Cover, the only thing to score lower at a pitiful 0 out of 10! </joke>
I didn't say that you were guaranteed to be the exclusive winner, just that the odds of winning scale linearly so if you had every combination of ticket you were guaranteed to win. Obviously that doesn't mean your're the only winner, and unless theres been a big rollover it should cost more to buy every ticket then the jackpot is worth.
If the odds of winning are 1 in 1 million (round numbers are easier, and past about 1 in 1000 with 1000 tickets the odds are asymptotic anyway), then the chance of not finding a winning ticket in the first million tickets purchased is 36.8%. Which means you only have a 65.2% chance of winning with 1 million tickets and a 1 in 1 million chance on each ticket. Not even close to 100%.
Isn't that wrong because you're ignoring how lotteries usually operate, which is to pick a winning combination out of a limited set. For your example if the lottery ticket consists of a player chosen number from 000000 to 999999 and the winner is decided by picking a random number from 000000 to 999999, then there is a 1 in 1 million chance of a single ticket winning. However if you buy 1 million different tickets then you have every single possible combination, so your chance of winning is 100%.
Quite the assumption on alien life forms using radio waves, but I guess as a civilization we gotta start somewhere with the search. Or, we can follow the sci-fi model and colonize worlds UNTIL we find alien life. The latter makes more sense in a lot of ways.
One of these things we can do right now, the other hasn't even been proved to be humanly possible yet.
Well, given a thousand years or so we could probably dump enough asteroid material on it to bring the mass up.
Not sure where you'd get all that asteroid material from, as if you dumped the entire mass of the asteroid belt on Mars you'd only increase its mass by 0.5%.
The Kuipler belt is much more massive, maybe 10% the mass of Earth, but that's mainly frozen ices rather than rock.
This then suggests a simple fix for global warming - we just need to move Earth into a slightly higher orbit.
Nah, we could simply drop a giant ice-cube into the ocean every now and then. Of course since the greenhouse gasses are still building up it will take more and more ice each time, thus solving the problem once and for all!
Yeah who cares about industrial safety eh? And don't get me started on environmental laws, the market should decide everything!
Actually Apple are just spouting nonsense. The regulation does not ban unguarded fans, it splits fans into 3 categories based on whether they can cause "pain" or "injury". I actually read the regulation and did the math, apparently a 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe that it could be on the outside of the case with no protection and still be legal. Even the next category up can be unguarded on the inside as long as there's a warning label.
Where does it end?
It ends when people actually get a clue about what the regulation says, rather than just listening to Apple's nonsense. The regulation does not ban unguarded fans, it splits fans into 3 categories based on whether they can cause "pain" or "injury". I actually read the regulation and did the math, apparently a 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe that it could be on the outside of the case with no protection and still be legal. Even the next category up can be unguarded on the inside as long as there's a warning label.
I can't see how any of the Mac Pro fans could possibly fail this, I can only think Apple are trying to deflect attention away from failing the electrical ports protection rules.
You really have to open up the case and want to stick your finger in there. Even if you would, these motors are low power. The potential injury would be minimal compared to a mixer. This makes no sense. Is the European Union turning into Fire Marshall Bill?
No it's not, because Apple is talking crap about the regulation. It only bans unguarded fans that are fast and heavy enough to cause injury. I actually read the regulation and did the math and found that a typical 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe it could be on the outside of the case with no guard and still be legal, so I can't imagine how any of the Mac Pro fans would fail it. Even the next fan category is legal to be unguarded on the inside as long as they put a warning sticker on it...
So if I understand the reg. in question, hardware with an internal fan (like a Mac Pro) that is only accessible if you pull the housing must have an internal fan guard? WTF?
This makes no sense. For that matter that thing about minimum and max cord length is pretty wacked. Is there really a computer, or transistor radio, manufacturer out there who wanted to deliver 7-meter power cords?
It doesn't. It only bans unguarded fans that are fast and heavy enough to cause injury. I actually read the regulation and did the math and found that a typical 10cm case fan at 3000rpm is considered so safe it could be on the outside of the case with no guard and still be legal, so I can't imagine how any of the Mac Pro fans would fail it.
but it is pretty much on-par with requiring fan guards on INTERNAL fans. At some point, governments (world-wide) have to understand that not everything, nor everyone, needs "protected", just because one stupid person went to the E.R. because they stuck their hand in a moving fan.
Except if you read the actual directive and do the math on fan speed/weight it seems unbelievable that any of the Mac Pro's fans would fail it.
The rules are NOT banning all unguarded fans, it only bans unguarded fans that would cause injury if touched.
As everyone's commenting how "retarded" this EU directive is without actually reading it I thought I'd find out exactly what it says, as it seemed strange that it would ban all unguarded internal fans.
I found this presentation on the EU directive, the part about fans starts at slide 32, or some direct links to the slides: 32, 33, 34, 35, 36.
Basically it appears fans are divided into 3 categories based on their diameter, fan blade speed and weight: a) Won't hurt if touched, b) Will hurt but won't injure if touched and c) Will injure if touched. Category a are fine anywhere, category b are ok in user serviceable areas as long as there's a warning sticker and category c fans can only be accessible to "service personnel". Seems pretty sensible for me.
Now I ran the numbers in the formula just to make sure they're not too strict and a fan with a 5cm blade radius and 100g weight going at 3000rpm (faster than the Mac Pro max rpm) is category a. Seriously a large case fan could be on the outside of the thing with no grill and still be legal.
Even if I've got the figures wrong for the Mac Pro's fans I can't imagine any of the fans being more than category b, which only requires a warning label. I can't help but think Apple are just using it as a PR excuse for failing the "electrical port protection" rules by trying to make the rules seem ridiculously strict.
Reading the patent this shouldn't apply to phone lock screens, the patent seems to be for a multi-factor unlock system that uses several different kind of user authorisation interactions (password followed by finger print scan followed by a gesture pattern for example), where mobile unlock screens are universally just a single action.
If this patent actually covered mobile phone unlock screens then it would also cover screen-saver wake passwords etc.
"Feels wronger" doesn't mean it's actually illegal tho
The Airbus also suffered from manufacturing problems as the German and Spanish facilities were using a different version of the CATIA CAD tool than the English and French facilities. This resulted in hilarity when modules from different locations did not mate as intended.
I don't see how making an initial bespoke prototype would have helped with this. An initial custom made part would have been made exactly to design and therefore perfect; the problems at the factory would only have come to light once the production line was tooled and running.
No, the problem wasn't no specs. The problem was that the system was designed on paper first, without actually building it. Then the specs for the individual pieces were created, and those individual modules were built from the specs. The idea was that then the parts were completed, they would be integrated and work perfectly together. Of course, that never happens because when the pieces come together for the first time, unanticipated problems occur. This is why early integration [ibm.com] is a good idea and is part of the philosophy of release early, release often [wikipedia.org].
Isn't that how all modern airliners are created? I'm trying to remember a documentary about the development of the A380, IIRC the entire thing was designed in CAD, the factories were then tooled and the first plane was created from parts from the same production line as the production run would come from.
Now it's a little different with Airbus as they manufactured most parts in their own factories, but I can't see how it would be economically practical to create a completely bespoke prototype aeroplane of the size and complexity of the 787, and even if they did the custom made parts are likely to differ slightly from the parts that eventually role off production. You certainly can't apply "release early, release often" software development methodologies to giant manufacturing projects like this!
If they did (b1) or (b2) above, especially if they didn't get the permission of every IP address which they probed/tested, then aren't they doing illegal penetration testing, even if all they are doing is checking for the existence of a responding port?
Would it be illegal though? For example how would it be illegal to scan port 80 on every public IP address?
And it's common in nature, in fact the human genome is full of them.
If, by accident, I discover they are failing to do so and I inform them of the problem, then I have an obligation to myself and all other facebook users to ensure the problem has been corrected.
But does that give you the right to test their site for all other possible vulnerabilities using a penetration tool without asking them?
That's not what he did tho, he ran a broad spectrum penetration test on the website. That's quite different to verifying that the specific vulnerability he found had been fixed.
Expulsion may uncalled for, but it's not like he's some blameless victim; he did a foolish thing by doing that without contacting them first.
Shame it's completely wrong, the window belongs to Omnivox. A better analogy would be that he noticed Omnivox had left their window open and told them, to which they thanked him. He then goes back 2 days later with a crowbar (Acunetix) to test whether they'd locked their windows properly yet.
Since his personal info is in this system, it is indeed his "window".
So I suppose you also own Facebook if you have an FB account?