isn't his "car" lighter weight than the aircraft you describe? wouldn't it then follow it would rise faster?
Nope. Because it's all about power to weight ratios. Unless his design becomes something drastically different then what we've seen, the engines to provide that type of performance simply do no exist.
Dr Moller expects to produce a successor within six years, a 'Skycar' capable of a climb rate of 6000 ft./min. and an airspeed of 400 mph.
To put this in perspective, an Apache Longbow with 2400HP and empty except for fuel, at sea level, *might* see 4000 ft/min; and this thing is designed for operation in the vertical. From a power to weight ratio, Moller has nothin even close to what an Apache can produce. As usual, he's full of BS. Heck, most light GA, piston aircraft are lucky to see 1000ft/min, especially once you get a couple thousand feet above sea level. Granted, most light GA doesn't have vertical thrust but my point is, he is simply not working in reality unless he knows about some super secret advancements in engine technology.
from holding my breath
Agreed. Make room because you're about to have a room full of dead bodies from everyone else holding their breath.
Your example makes sense, but what if you've already done that? Say your app is SQL-based and does some queries that are O(n^2) complex.
This is why we have things like database clusters and distributed queries. Sometimes scaling horizontally makes more sense and is cheaper than trying to scale vertically. Which probably explains why it is so popular.;)
In the USA. Let's say I have an app that is so dependent on performance that the hit taken by running a slower hard drive is currently a show stopping issue.
Then the person who spec'd the system is either an idiot or incompetent. By definition you have a system which is a single point of failure which forces your system to operate below accetable minimums. With this system you should have one or more drives on hot standby or additional active disks in your array to absorb the performance hit.
Given the recent accouncement that one in a thousand will lose a second drive within twentyfour hours of the first drive's failure, it sounds like this system requires at least two hot standby drives or one hot standby and one cold standby; depending on the uptime requirements. Either way, your example is cause to fire the admin, nothing more.
as pretty much all mobos these days have RAID1 capability built into the chipset's SATA controller anyway.
And many of those are actually slower than a pure, software-only, RAID solution. Sometimes the "hardware RAID" does nothing but offload checksum calculations or other bits onto slower hardware resulting it in being a major performance hinderence rather than a performance boost. Worse yet, if your controller card dies, ALL of your data is now inaccessible. Worse yet again, there is not guarantee future hardware releases, even by the same manufacturer, will be compatible. Heck some of the really low end hardware solutions don't even provide mirrored reads, which should provide a 2x read-only performance boost.
Not all RAID is created equal. And for many, software RAID, especially for Linux users, provides a solution faster than many RAID hardware solutions, is future proof, and only costs a couple of precent in additional CPU load. Best of all, it's free and works well with LVM. In a day and age where multiple cores are common and few actually use more than one, this option doesn't have much of a downside until you're willing to look at *REAL* RAID hardware.
Wait a minute! This is profiling! Where are all the loons that cry out how abusive this is?? After all, we all know common sense should be made illegal and those that use it must be punished!
I wish I could find a reference. Humans also have a lot in common with pigs, genetically speaking. The percentage is almost as high, but I don't recall the exact number. Heck, they even say humans tastes like pork. There is a reason why pig parts and cells are now used for both human organ replacement and medical research. Odd we're not using chimp parts.
Also, lots and lots of living organisms have some 40%-60% in common with humans, if not more. So that really means we only differ some 60%-40% from some drastically different organisms. That really means 98% genetically alike really means something like 4%-6+% genetically different where it matters. Add in the fact that a tiny percent of one percent in genetic material can have huge impact what it it means to be "human". This really suggests we have far more not in common then we have in common with the likes of chimps and great apes. Especially once you consider not all genetic material is created equal. Seriously, where it matters, ignoring the material that is largely common between humans and other varying life, we are probably some 10%-20% different...where it really matters.
but 12 people, too stupid to get out of jury duty,
I always hate it when people use that expression. Another way of interpreting that statement is, hundreds of people too selfish, greedy or stupid to perform their civic DUTY, often prevents the system from working properly. But then these hundreds will go off complain how broken the system is. Its kind of like throwing lit matches around ones home while pointing out how every day items around the house tends to be flamable. So who is really the stupid one?
IMO, there are three serious problems with the current legal system. One, most any moron can be a judge. Judges are not even required to be knowledgable or communicate with a subject matter expert for issues on which they rule. Two, too many laws are writen by lawyers which only benefit lawyers; serving only to generate more billable hours. Three, people try hard to break the legal system by avoiding their civic duty, thereby insuring the "dumb ones", by in large, are on juries. So we have idiot judges ruling on topics well outside of their expertise, often for laws which make no sense, running a trial for jurries too stupid to get out of their duty because the people that should be there lied their way out of it.
Most Americans seem to think paying more means higher quality. Most don't seem to understand that's not how the world works. It happens all the time where a superior, less expensive product fails because because they were simply out marketed. Heck, I've even seen situations where potential customer's would even look at the product because it was significantly less expensive than the compentition. The solution was to double the price, reword the "sale brochures", and the customer bought...the exact same product as what was half as expensive the day before.
Case in point, look at Microsoft. They have buggy, crappy products for the most part, but they prevail because what they lack as a technology company they more than compensate as a Marketing company with ruthless business tactics. MS is not king because they are a technology giant. Microsoft is not king because they are a quality giant.
The lession learned is American consumers as a whole are dumber than dirt.
She was telling me fairly recently that the level of casual sexism, and the air of intimidation and of it being a male domain meant that whereas 10 or 15 years ago there were actually more women/girls on the courses than men, it was now overwhelmingly male dominated.
Of course she fails to see the obvious reasons. A lot has changed since the 60s; which really got rolling in the 40s. When she saw lots of women, lots of women had been given a free pass. Accordinly, lots of women were in lots of fields; deserving or otherwise. During the 80s, women were told they can have both, a family and a career, but the free passes started disappearing. As a result fewer women were around. The women that were left were largely there because they earned it. In the 90s, more women have realized they were fed a line of crap. You can NOT have it both ways. As a result, more women have focused on families and feel a loss of opportunity for income. It's now the 2000's and women realize that if they want a family, they don't have time for a job. To boot, since WWII, when women entered the workforce in mass, inflation now requires two bread winners for the same standard of living. This has not gone unnoticed by women.
Ironically, many women who could never bad a real career option have created a movement to justify them "at-home" job while attempting to make those that do work feel guilty for neglecting their families. This new class is call "soccer moms." There has actually been several books writen on the subject. As a result, more and more women now feel guilty for wanting to work and are simply not entering the job market, let alone a career which requires significant time and dedication away from the family.
Long story short, it's VERY easy to explain why there is such a reduction of women in technical fields without gender ever being a factor from a job perspective. Heck, if you want to find a gender to blame for the gender gap, you can squarely start pointing a finger at their own gender. Much of the pressures women feel today outside of their job, originate from their own gender...and decades are crap from other ignorant women.
Imagine being fed a line of crap that you can have it both ways, realize you've been lied to, you now have a family and feel guilty for not pulling your own weight for income and guilty for not being at home to support your family. That's a sucky place to be. It's pretty easy to understand that some women might already be significantly stressed before you lay on the stresses of both work and home...
There's still a prevalent image of Linux and other open source software out there as just hobbyist software.
I would disagree with you on that statement. With the likes of IBM, Oracle, and many other big names behind Linux, few look at Linux the same way they did even five years ago. Heck, not even MS looks at Linux like that anymore; even in public.
I would argue you need to update your perception to match the times. You appear to be some five years or more behind the times.
You are engaging in the same ignorant stereotyping that many around here complain of with respect to how geeks, and technical issues/people in general, are portrayed on TV and movies.
Hey, give the guy a break. It is obvious he really enjoys reading Dilbert.;)
About a year ago I watched a documentary on global warming and the computer models they had. The guy they interviewed is one of the guys working to pefect the computer models. The guy was very frank that the computer models are in no way, shape, or form reflective of anything other than experimentaion and the desire to develop worthy models. Basically, they tweak the models and some of the data to match the historical records. It's a never ending process as days go by. The data and models are constantly updated as days roll by.
In other words, you are completely correct. The people that actually create the models do not believe the models are good enough. In fact, they state once you get out more than a couple of years, the margin error makes the model completely useless. That's why they continue to tune and develop their models; because they are currently not good enough for anything other than experimentation.
In the show he ran some historical simulations which made dire predictions. He then ran a simulation showing the actual data. They were night and day different. So basically, the only thing we can prove with current computer models is that we know little about how everything works and we really have no clue as to what tomorrow's climate will bring.
Remember, we can barely forecast LOCAL metorilogical events futher than three days...and the third day forecast has a large margin for error. It's dumbfounding how people believe they can more accurately predict the climate for the entire world, decades to hundreds of years in the future knowing we don't have all the variables accounted for, when we can't even accurately predict the local weather (a better understood system) worth a flip, more than two days out.
I just don't understand how people can fail to see what is so obvious. Anyone that believes the predictions of existing climate computer models needs to go back to watching cartoon network for advanced studies in physics.
The chances of a solar flare killing a significant proportion of the GPS satellites seems very remote.
Actually, accordingly to the experts, it fairly likely to occur in the next ten to fifteen years because of a specific solar cycle we are just now starting to enter. This cycle creates much stronger and faster solar flares. It's expected we will lose a large number of sats over the next decade or two.
There currently is zero contention on where the funds will come from. Under current fee schedules, the FAA with have some 120 million extra in their coffers AFTER they complete their ADS-B deployment.
How do I know this? Because it's in the public record. The airlines and their lobbyist have been spreading misinformation and FUD on a make believe funding crisis. They have been doing this to take control of the FAA. What? Ya, sounds odd, but here are the details.
Right now, ever ticket sold has a tax which pays for infrastructure costs. Plus, every gallon of fuel sold (per gallon tax) pays for infrastructure costs. The airlines, by far, are the largest users of FAA services. What they want to do is to have the per ticket tax waived, pocket it, reduce their tax on Jet fuel and increase the taxes on the planes that hardly or rarely use FAA services. On top of that, they then want to create a "user fee" system where the FAA is free to set their own rates. The want to charge for items such as weather briefing, landing fees, IFR (instrument flying) service fees, in route update fee, etc. This means two things. One, and most importantly, the FAA would no longer have to own up to Congress on how and where they spend their money. Which is sad because right now they can not even explain where some 20 million went. And two, the small guy would be expected to pay the airline's share in taxes. Worse yet, even by the FAA and airline's own admission, they would suddenly create a significant funding short fall.
In a nut shell we have: o Airlines want per ticket tax waived so they can pocket it (ticket prices would not be reduced) o Airlines want a tax reduction forcing small guys to carry the airline's tax burden o The airlines/FAA and crying the current infrastructure will not pay for new tech deployment o Both the FAA and airlines have finally admitted their scheme will fall short of the existing taxes by hundreds of millions. AOPA has been saying this for a long time using the FAA's and the airline's own numbers with VERY conservative accounting.
Contrary to the assertions made in the article, there are fewer planes flying now than there has been since the 1970s; which is the US's peak in aviation. Even the current infrastructure can handle the load. The FAA's concern is a new category of jet has been created; the Very Light Jet (VLJ). The problem is projections indicate the FAA's current tax schedule will be able to handle the growth until at least 2030.
Long story short we have the airlines and the FAA working to break free of Congress' funding oversight. Currently, the US's FAA model is considered the best model in the world for both funding and safety, bar none. In all other places in the world where user fees have been implemented, GA has been destroyed, costing thousands and thousands of jobs. Worse, most analysts exist aviation safety will begin to decline almost immediately as pilots will now be reluctant to use federal services because it costs a per use fee. This means more pilots in higher densities without being in contact with each other. Worse, this means more pilots flying into unknown weather conditions.
Long story short, the funding for this system is already well established. Any short falls will be addressed by congress. Their current effort is to break free of congress and create a windfall for the FAA and the airlines; as they would be free to charge anything they want for their services. If they get their way, US skies will very likely become a dangerous place to be, even in commercial planes.
If this concerns you, I highly recommend you contact your representatives and congressman to let them know you expect the airlines to pay their own way and you demand the skies remain the world's example of safety. Tell them absolutely no user fees.
Why the resistance using a seatbelt *and* and airbag?
On a bicycle?
And why do you assume that an eliminated bug will necessarily be replaced by a different bug?
Because the lack of experience and general knowledge is often the cause of poor design which creates flaws by design or poor implementation. The later, if not creating a problem here will create a problem there.
The reality is, owning a screw driver does not make you a better mechanic. Owning an electric screw driver does not make you a better mechanic yet. Either you are a good mechanic or you are not. Period.
I'm not dismissing what you're saying out right. What I'm saying and you seem to be missing is the only way to FIX the problem is to address the root cause. You want to hide the problem with an electric screw driver. There is a huge difference. And believe it or not, many, many bugs are caused by the process, which indirectly prevents the fingers from doing their job, and not lacking experience or skill. Sure, I focused on bottom feeders but that's because the others are much more complex and I didn't want to write a book here.
Just as security is a process, so is programming. No change in language is going to cure a bad programmer. Period. Sure, a buffer overflow may now be addressed but they will simply be replaced with other critical bugs. This is the nature of inexperienced and low-end programmers.
To be clear, I believe languages like perl and python, so on and so on, are simply great! But I've seen some real crappy and buggy code which enables completely arbitrary execution of native perl, python, and even allowed SQL injection written in these languages. The only real cure is to fix the root cause. Anything else is either hiding or attempting to move the problem domain elsewhere in the code. Ultimately, the root cause is always the finger on the keyboard.
You'll also find the "most common" mistakes are made by the least experienced coders. You seem to be suffering from the approach that anyone should be able to code and the tools need to defend against idiots. No matter what, you must have quality *professionals* if you want professional quality code; without regard for the language in which it is written.
If these problems can be fixed by people taking software development serious, then it is indeed a core issue with people, no?;)
Considering most languages these days (include C/C++; C++ much more so) already have facilities available to avoid most of these pit falls, I do not believe your comment has legs. Let's be honest here, the a huge chunk of these problems pop up because of complete indifference to the problems at hand. In these "safer" languages, different types of problems become more common, simply shifting the problem domain, because the root cause is still poor programming standards and practices. If the later is addressed the former is drastically reduced, regardless of the language. So it seems to me, without regard for the programming language, requiring higher standards and procedures addresses a broad range of programming associated bugs; exploitable or not.
Frankly, I've found programmer working on projects I wouldn't trust to wash my car and have no concept of the most basic of algorithms or best practices. So which is at fault, the super cheap bottom feeders or the language at hand? To be clear, problems extend well beyond just the bottom feeders as its held in place by a mass of consumers which are more than happy to buy buggy software. IMO, this is a standard squarely established by Microsoft as most simply have no idea they should have higher expectations.
Some time translation matters. Heck, look at the bible. There is a huge difference between the entire world flooding and a valley flooding. Imagine the impact that difference may have had on religion had the proper translation been made accessible? The mistranslated version makes for powerful stuff. The real translation means they documented something is which well known to occur, and is geologically documented as having occurred.
A translated version is only as good as the translator...and often they are only as good they are a historian when we are talking about old texts.
Yes, because you would never want a generation to understand their social obligations to ensure they keep their government in check. You can call it crap but I would argue your statement supports you completely missed the point of those books; which is sad. Sure, the quality of the literature isn't that hot, but it does make one think, ask questions, talk, and for many, act. These books are very accessible and easy to understand by the masses. And all these things together is what makes the difference. Anything which forms a common point of reference for healthy social interaction can not be crap.
To boot, books which are shared between generations help create common points of reference. Generational continuity is nothing but goodness.
The worst part of it is, 1984 entered our language and gets falsely applied to any single discussion about government power. There ought'a be a extension of Godwin's Law, adding the works of George Orwell in as well.
Simple fact is, if books like F451 and 1984 are such crap, they wouldn't be brought up all the time. They obviously strike a cord, deep within. Sure, most people who do bring it up are well, odd, but that hardly invalidates it. The simple fact it does strike a cord deep within so many people, including every day people, IMO, completely invalidates your view on the entire subject.
I also find it odd (supporting my position that you completely missed the boat) that in a day where the US (and other parts of the world - England, etc) is becoming more colored in the subtle shadows of 1984, one would so openly advocate it should be ignored as "crap." Worse, while extreme, F451 has been realized all over the world, not so many years ago (last couple of years even), so I would argue it is still very relevant. In fact, I have to wonder about the motives of anyone that would argue against the reading of that book.
I'm curious, which books would you suggest as an alternatives which are equally accessible to the masses?
Slashdot Mirror
isn't his "car" lighter weight than the aircraft you describe?
wouldn't it then follow it would rise faster?
Nope. Because it's all about power to weight ratios. Unless his design becomes something drastically different then what we've seen, the engines to provide that type of performance simply do no exist.
Dr Moller expects to produce a successor within six years, a 'Skycar' capable of a climb rate of 6000 ft./min. and an airspeed of 400 mph.
To put this in perspective, an Apache Longbow with 2400HP and empty except for fuel, at sea level, *might* see 4000 ft/min; and this thing is designed for operation in the vertical. From a power to weight ratio, Moller has nothin even close to what an Apache can produce. As usual, he's full of BS. Heck, most light GA, piston aircraft are lucky to see 1000ft/min, especially once you get a couple thousand feet above sea level. Granted, most light GA doesn't have vertical thrust but my point is, he is simply not working in reality unless he knows about some super secret advancements in engine technology.
from holding my breath
Agreed. Make room because you're about to have a room full of dead bodies from everyone else holding their breath.
Your example makes sense, but what if you've already done that? Say your app is SQL-based and does some queries that are O(n^2) complex.
;)
This is why we have things like database clusters and distributed queries. Sometimes scaling horizontally makes more sense and is cheaper than trying to scale vertically. Which probably explains why it is so popular.
In the USA. Let's say I have an app that is so dependent on performance that the hit taken by running a slower hard drive is currently a show stopping issue.
Then the person who spec'd the system is either an idiot or incompetent. By definition you have a system which is a single point of failure which forces your system to operate below accetable minimums. With this system you should have one or more drives on hot standby or additional active disks in your array to absorb the performance hit.
Given the recent accouncement that one in a thousand will lose a second drive within twentyfour hours of the first drive's failure, it sounds like this system requires at least two hot standby drives or one hot standby and one cold standby; depending on the uptime requirements. Either way, your example is cause to fire the admin, nothing more.
as pretty much all mobos these days have RAID1 capability built into the chipset's SATA controller anyway.
And many of those are actually slower than a pure, software-only, RAID solution. Sometimes the "hardware RAID" does nothing but offload checksum calculations or other bits onto slower hardware resulting it in being a major performance hinderence rather than a performance boost. Worse yet, if your controller card dies, ALL of your data is now inaccessible. Worse yet again, there is not guarantee future hardware releases, even by the same manufacturer, will be compatible. Heck some of the really low end hardware solutions don't even provide mirrored reads, which should provide a 2x read-only performance boost.
Not all RAID is created equal. And for many, software RAID, especially for Linux users, provides a solution faster than many RAID hardware solutions, is future proof, and only costs a couple of precent in additional CPU load. Best of all, it's free and works well with LVM. In a day and age where multiple cores are common and few actually use more than one, this option doesn't have much of a downside until you're willing to look at *REAL* RAID hardware.
Wait a minute! This is profiling! Where are all the loons that cry out how abusive this is?? After all, we all know common sense should be made illegal and those that use it must be punished!
Wish I had points to spend on your comment. +1 Insightful.
I wish I could find a reference. Humans also have a lot in common with pigs, genetically speaking. The percentage is almost as high, but I don't recall the exact number. Heck, they even say humans tastes like pork. There is a reason why pig parts and cells are now used for both human organ replacement and medical research. Odd we're not using chimp parts.
Also, lots and lots of living organisms have some 40%-60% in common with humans, if not more. So that really means we only differ some 60%-40% from some drastically different organisms. That really means 98% genetically alike really means something like 4%-6+% genetically different where it matters. Add in the fact that a tiny percent of one percent in genetic material can have huge impact what it it means to be "human". This really suggests we have far more not in common then we have in common with the likes of chimps and great apes. Especially once you consider not all genetic material is created equal. Seriously, where it matters, ignoring the material that is largely common between humans and other varying life, we are probably some 10%-20% different...where it really matters.
but 12 people, too stupid to get out of jury duty,
I always hate it when people use that expression. Another way of interpreting that statement is, hundreds of people too selfish, greedy or stupid to perform their civic DUTY, often prevents the system from working properly. But then these hundreds will go off complain how broken the system is. Its kind of like throwing lit matches around ones home while pointing out how every day items around the house tends to be flamable. So who is really the stupid one?
IMO, there are three serious problems with the current legal system. One, most any moron can be a judge. Judges are not even required to be knowledgable or communicate with a subject matter expert for issues on which they rule. Two, too many laws are writen by lawyers which only benefit lawyers; serving only to generate more billable hours. Three, people try hard to break the legal system by avoiding their civic duty, thereby insuring the "dumb ones", by in large, are on juries. So we have idiot judges ruling on topics well outside of their expertise, often for laws which make no sense, running a trial for jurries too stupid to get out of their duty because the people that should be there lied their way out of it.
The US is well known for it's droughts during the same period. In fact, droughts and poor agro practices caused the Dust Bowl during that period.
Most Americans seem to think paying more means higher quality. Most don't seem to understand that's not how the world works. It happens all the time where a superior, less expensive product fails because because they were simply out marketed. Heck, I've even seen situations where potential customer's would even look at the product because it was significantly less expensive than the compentition. The solution was to double the price, reword the "sale brochures", and the customer bought...the exact same product as what was half as expensive the day before.
Case in point, look at Microsoft. They have buggy, crappy products for the most part, but they prevail because what they lack as a technology company they more than compensate as a Marketing company with ruthless business tactics. MS is not king because they are a technology giant. Microsoft is not king because they are a quality giant.
The lession learned is American consumers as a whole are dumber than dirt.
Pre-tell then, what is a crash?
;)
When an exception is thrown and is not properly caught. The error is caused by improper error trapping. This is a classic "crash."
She was telling me fairly recently that the level of casual sexism, and the air of intimidation and of it being a male domain meant that whereas 10 or 15 years ago there were actually more women/girls on the courses than men, it was now overwhelmingly male dominated.
Of course she fails to see the obvious reasons. A lot has changed since the 60s; which really got rolling in the 40s. When she saw lots of women, lots of women had been given a free pass. Accordinly, lots of women were in lots of fields; deserving or otherwise. During the 80s, women were told they can have both, a family and a career, but the free passes started disappearing. As a result fewer women were around. The women that were left were largely there because they earned it. In the 90s, more women have realized they were fed a line of crap. You can NOT have it both ways. As a result, more women have focused on families and feel a loss of opportunity for income. It's now the 2000's and women realize that if they want a family, they don't have time for a job. To boot, since WWII, when women entered the workforce in mass, inflation now requires two bread winners for the same standard of living. This has not gone unnoticed by women.
Ironically, many women who could never bad a real career option have created a movement to justify them "at-home" job while attempting to make those that do work feel guilty for neglecting their families. This new class is call "soccer moms." There has actually been several books writen on the subject. As a result, more and more women now feel guilty for wanting to work and are simply not entering the job market, let alone a career which requires significant time and dedication away from the family.
Long story short, it's VERY easy to explain why there is such a reduction of women in technical fields without gender ever being a factor from a job perspective. Heck, if you want to find a gender to blame for the gender gap, you can squarely start pointing a finger at their own gender. Much of the pressures women feel today outside of their job, originate from their own gender...and decades are crap from other ignorant women.
Imagine being fed a line of crap that you can have it both ways, realize you've been lied to, you now have a family and feel guilty for not pulling your own weight for income and guilty for not being at home to support your family. That's a sucky place to be. It's pretty easy to understand that some women might already be significantly stressed before you lay on the stresses of both work and home...
There's still a prevalent image of Linux and other open source software out there as just hobbyist software.
I would disagree with you on that statement. With the likes of IBM, Oracle, and many other big names behind Linux, few look at Linux the same way they did even five years ago. Heck, not even MS looks at Linux like that anymore; even in public.
I would argue you need to update your perception to match the times. You appear to be some five years or more behind the times.
You are engaging in the same ignorant stereotyping that many around here complain of with respect to how geeks, and technical issues/people in general, are portrayed on TV and movies.
;)
Hey, give the guy a break. It is obvious he really enjoys reading Dilbert.
About a year ago I watched a documentary on global warming and the computer models they had. The guy they interviewed is one of the guys working to pefect the computer models. The guy was very frank that the computer models are in no way, shape, or form reflective of anything other than experimentaion and the desire to develop worthy models. Basically, they tweak the models and some of the data to match the historical records. It's a never ending process as days go by. The data and models are constantly updated as days roll by.
In other words, you are completely correct. The people that actually create the models do not believe the models are good enough. In fact, they state once you get out more than a couple of years, the margin error makes the model completely useless. That's why they continue to tune and develop their models; because they are currently not good enough for anything other than experimentation.
In the show he ran some historical simulations which made dire predictions. He then ran a simulation showing the actual data. They were night and day different. So basically, the only thing we can prove with current computer models is that we know little about how everything works and we really have no clue as to what tomorrow's climate will bring.
Remember, we can barely forecast LOCAL metorilogical events futher than three days...and the third day forecast has a large margin for error. It's dumbfounding how people believe they can more accurately predict the climate for the entire world, decades to hundreds of years in the future knowing we don't have all the variables accounted for, when we can't even accurately predict the local weather (a better understood system) worth a flip, more than two days out.
I just don't understand how people can fail to see what is so obvious. Anyone that believes the predictions of existing climate computer models needs to go back to watching cartoon network for advanced studies in physics.
I compiled and ran the examples on my AMD system. They run without issue.
The chances of a solar flare killing a significant proportion of the GPS satellites seems very remote.
Actually, accordingly to the experts, it fairly likely to occur in the next ten to fifteen years because of a specific solar cycle we are just now starting to enter. This cycle creates much stronger and faster solar flares. It's expected we will lose a large number of sats over the next decade or two.
There currently is zero contention on where the funds will come from. Under current fee schedules, the FAA with have some 120 million extra in their coffers AFTER they complete their ADS-B deployment.
How do I know this? Because it's in the public record. The airlines and their lobbyist have been spreading misinformation and FUD on a make believe funding crisis. They have been doing this to take control of the FAA. What? Ya, sounds odd, but here are the details.
Right now, ever ticket sold has a tax which pays for infrastructure costs. Plus, every gallon of fuel sold (per gallon tax) pays for infrastructure costs. The airlines, by far, are the largest users of FAA services. What they want to do is to have the per ticket tax waived, pocket it, reduce their tax on Jet fuel and increase the taxes on the planes that hardly or rarely use FAA services. On top of that, they then want to create a "user fee" system where the FAA is free to set their own rates. The want to charge for items such as weather briefing, landing fees, IFR (instrument flying) service fees, in route update fee, etc. This means two things. One, and most importantly, the FAA would no longer have to own up to Congress on how and where they spend their money. Which is sad because right now they can not even explain where some 20 million went. And two, the small guy would be expected to pay the airline's share in taxes. Worse yet, even by the FAA and airline's own admission, they would suddenly create a significant funding short fall.
In a nut shell we have:
o Airlines want per ticket tax waived so they can pocket it (ticket prices would not be reduced)
o Airlines want a tax reduction forcing small guys to carry the airline's tax burden
o The airlines/FAA and crying the current infrastructure will not pay for new tech deployment
o Both the FAA and airlines have finally admitted their scheme will fall short of the existing taxes by hundreds of millions. AOPA has been saying this for a long time using the FAA's and the airline's own numbers with VERY conservative accounting.
Contrary to the assertions made in the article, there are fewer planes flying now than there has been since the 1970s; which is the US's peak in aviation. Even the current infrastructure can handle the load. The FAA's concern is a new category of jet has been created; the Very Light Jet (VLJ). The problem is projections indicate the FAA's current tax schedule will be able to handle the growth until at least 2030.
Long story short we have the airlines and the FAA working to break free of Congress' funding oversight. Currently, the US's FAA model is considered the best model in the world for both funding and safety, bar none. In all other places in the world where user fees have been implemented, GA has been destroyed, costing thousands and thousands of jobs. Worse, most analysts exist aviation safety will begin to decline almost immediately as pilots will now be reluctant to use federal services because it costs a per use fee. This means more pilots in higher densities without being in contact with each other. Worse, this means more pilots flying into unknown weather conditions.
Long story short, the funding for this system is already well established. Any short falls will be addressed by congress. Their current effort is to break free of congress and create a windfall for the FAA and the airlines; as they would be free to charge anything they want for their services. If they get their way, US skies will very likely become a dangerous place to be, even in commercial planes.
If this concerns you, I highly recommend you contact your representatives and congressman to let them know you expect the airlines to pay their own way and you demand the skies remain the world's example of safety. Tell them absolutely no user fees.
If you want more information, please go to http://aopa.org./
One last note, there is a FAA crisis looming. Right now, there is a mandatory re
LOL. Fair enough. LOL.
Why the resistance using a seatbelt *and* and airbag?
On a bicycle?
And why do you assume that an eliminated bug will necessarily be replaced by a different bug?
Because the lack of experience and general knowledge is often the cause of poor design which creates flaws by design or poor implementation. The later, if not creating a problem here will create a problem there.
The reality is, owning a screw driver does not make you a better mechanic. Owning an electric screw driver does not make you a better mechanic yet. Either you are a good mechanic or you are not. Period.
I'm not dismissing what you're saying out right. What I'm saying and you seem to be missing is the only way to FIX the problem is to address the root cause. You want to hide the problem with an electric screw driver. There is a huge difference. And believe it or not, many, many bugs are caused by the process, which indirectly prevents the fingers from doing their job, and not lacking experience or skill. Sure, I focused on bottom feeders but that's because the others are much more complex and I didn't want to write a book here.
Just as security is a process, so is programming. No change in language is going to cure a bad programmer. Period. Sure, a buffer overflow may now be addressed but they will simply be replaced with other critical bugs. This is the nature of inexperienced and low-end programmers.
To be clear, I believe languages like perl and python, so on and so on, are simply great! But I've seen some real crappy and buggy code which enables completely arbitrary execution of native perl, python, and even allowed SQL injection written in these languages. The only real cure is to fix the root cause. Anything else is either hiding or attempting to move the problem domain elsewhere in the code. Ultimately, the root cause is always the finger on the keyboard.
You'll also find the "most common" mistakes are made by the least experienced coders. You seem to be suffering from the approach that anyone should be able to code and the tools need to defend against idiots. No matter what, you must have quality *professionals* if you want professional quality code; without regard for the language in which it is written.
If these problems can be fixed by people taking software development serious, then it is indeed a core issue with people, no? ;)
Considering most languages these days (include C/C++; C++ much more so) already have facilities available to avoid most of these pit falls, I do not believe your comment has legs. Let's be honest here, the a huge chunk of these problems pop up because of complete indifference to the problems at hand. In these "safer" languages, different types of problems become more common, simply shifting the problem domain, because the root cause is still poor programming standards and practices. If the later is addressed the former is drastically reduced, regardless of the language. So it seems to me, without regard for the programming language, requiring higher standards and procedures addresses a broad range of programming associated bugs; exploitable or not.
Frankly, I've found programmer working on projects I wouldn't trust to wash my car and have no concept of the most basic of algorithms or best practices. So which is at fault, the super cheap bottom feeders or the language at hand? To be clear, problems extend well beyond just the bottom feeders as its held in place by a mass of consumers which are more than happy to buy buggy software. IMO, this is a standard squarely established by Microsoft as most simply have no idea they should have higher expectations.
Some time translation matters. Heck, look at the bible. There is a huge difference between the entire world flooding and a valley flooding. Imagine the impact that difference may have had on religion had the proper translation been made accessible? The mistranslated version makes for powerful stuff. The real translation means they documented something is which well known to occur, and is geologically documented as having occurred.
A translated version is only as good as the translator...and often they are only as good they are a historian when we are talking about old texts.
Just some good for thought.
1984 was crap.
Yes, because you would never want a generation to understand their social obligations to ensure they keep their government in check. You can call it crap but I would argue your statement supports you completely missed the point of those books; which is sad. Sure, the quality of the literature isn't that hot, but it does make one think, ask questions, talk, and for many, act. These books are very accessible and easy to understand by the masses. And all these things together is what makes the difference. Anything which forms a common point of reference for healthy social interaction can not be crap.
To boot, books which are shared between generations help create common points of reference. Generational continuity is nothing but goodness.
The worst part of it is, 1984 entered our language and gets falsely applied to any single discussion about government power. There ought'a be a extension of Godwin's Law, adding the works of George Orwell in as well.
Simple fact is, if books like F451 and 1984 are such crap, they wouldn't be brought up all the time. They obviously strike a cord, deep within. Sure, most people who do bring it up are well, odd, but that hardly invalidates it. The simple fact it does strike a cord deep within so many people, including every day people, IMO, completely invalidates your view on the entire subject.
I also find it odd (supporting my position that you completely missed the boat) that in a day where the US (and other parts of the world - England, etc) is becoming more colored in the subtle shadows of 1984, one would so openly advocate it should be ignored as "crap." Worse, while extreme, F451 has been realized all over the world, not so many years ago (last couple of years even), so I would argue it is still very relevant. In fact, I have to wonder about the motives of anyone that would argue against the reading of that book.
I'm curious, which books would you suggest as an alternatives which are equally accessible to the masses?