There are other, rarer items from that era that consistently sell for much less. I won't speculate on the other possibilities, but technology enthusiast can safely be ruled out.
I can see them building a physical replica, but there's just about no way at all that it would work the same.
Even if you completely ignore things like the remote data communication, reverse engineering the mission computer would take forever if it was possible at all. You've got dozens of LRUs (GPS, INS, analog to digital converters, MMR, etc). A lot if not most of this stuff isn't going to be functional on the ground.
Consider for a moment a Weight on Wheels switch. It's going to do a lot of important stuff. For instance, that's going to be one of the key functions that tells the radar not to power up and shoot a bunch of radiation directly into the technician's nutsack. The MC even on an old C-130 is a couple hundred thousand lines of code. The MIL-STD-1553B bus being used supports multiple channels with each channel supporting 32 LRUs (ignoring broadcast and the like, for simplicity). Each LRU will have 32 subaddresses, and each subaddress will consist of 32 16-bit words. We're looking at millions of bits potentially changing every single cycle. How long does it take to isolate which one corresponds to weight on wheels? How about the one that the MC sends to the radar to tell it not to power up while on the ground?
Or how about a different, more simple example. The unit will have a terrain following mode. If it's on the ground, that simply isn't going to work. There's no way you can simulate the conditions for the mission computer to receive an obstacle warning from the radar, then send out an override to the controls to modify course.
Millions and millions of bits changing every cycle. Even on ancient technology that runs at 20 Hz, you're looking at 20 cycles per second (which consists of one frame). Each bit within each cycle of each frame might correspond to a very different discrete signal.
It can be done, but it's not happening within a year. They're building a shell, but the important stuff is useless to them without much, much more time.
Something similar happened to me my freshman year of college.
I had an 8am EF exam the following day, so I was up late studying for it. Around 1am or so, my calculator batteries died. I was just about ready to go to bed after studying one or two more problems, so I was quite unhappy about having to go out to get new batteries.
Speed limit on the main street between myself and the nearest 24-hr convenience store half a mile away was 45 (I know, I should have walked. But all I wanted was to get it over with so I could sleep). I got pulled over for "drag racing" even though the streets were entirely empty other than myself and a cop waiting on a side road. To be fair, I was getting up to speed limit as quickly as possible so I could get it over with. But I was also "paced" at 60, which means he did not clock me but instead estimated my speed based on speeding up to catch up to me after turning off his side street. He included the streets where all this happened, so this gave me all the distances between incidences that I needed.
I used simple integrals to show the velocity/position relationship, along with the factory specifications of my car. End result is that the judge said he had no idea at all what I was talking about, and the ticket was dismissed because "it sounded right".
Charting and mission planning are done way before the plane is in the air. It's typically loaded via a 3.5" floppy or PCMCIA card and can be manipulated through the VDTs if any sort of changes are necessary. If an EMP or similar managed to take out the mission computers (which shouldn't happen, since they are hardened), no way would they still attempt to complete the mission.
I've never even stopped to think about what it stands for, but it looks like Digital Map Interface System. It's basically a wrapper around Falcon View that does most of the stuff mentioned in the original post. In practice, it seems to just be used to manipulate flight plans on the fly rather than load a new one if it needs to be altered mid-mission.
The adapter wouldn't even need to be specially made. I've got two different HTC phones here that did not come with a conventional AC adapter. It's a standard 110V plug on one side that you plug a USB cable into.
It'll charge the battery from almost dead to full in about an hour or so, so it's not one of those slow trickle charges that are basically useless if the device is on.
Tablets, at least for the purpose they're using them, also won't be outdated in two years. Many of the planes are running Falcon View on Windows 2000 on the original computers that came with Windows 98. Similarly, stuff like PASS3200 for analyzing 1553 data are sometimes still running their original Windows 95 computers even though they could easily be analyzed in Windows 7. There's just no need to. They're running the exact same stuff now as they were then, and so age is no factor.
Now, if you're talking about being designed to *break* in two years, that might be a different story. But it would also be a story not as many people would be willing to swallow.
If we were specifically looking for someone with a master's or a particular certification, we would almost certainly go with an applicant who got their degree/cert from a brick and mortar school over the person with the online credentials (all other qualifications being the same).
On the other hand, if we were looking for someone with a bachelor's and one applicant had a master's from an online degree, they would probably be in the forefront. Of course, they probably wouldn't be compensated beyond having a bachelor's given that that's all we had written out in the requirements.
Why do you only have like 5 posts, and every single one of them talks about what a visionary Steve Jobs is? It seems you created your account last week, when you "bought your first Mac".
Because their IT department is not doing their job and explaining to them why it's stupid.
It's not intuitive. It's obvious to you, who has extensive training. The technicalities behind IT are unimportant to everyone else. They make more money and perform more important actions. The company hires IT to mop up after them and provide some extra tools that could be beneficial to their job. Chances are, you have little to no knowledge whatsoever about their job. Other chances are, they're not posting on forums about how stupid you are because of it.
I used to work in IT back before I went to college. Without fail, every single coworker I ever had had some sort of weird fetish with being "in charge" of everyone else's data. Regular venting is normal of course, but I found myself constantly having to remind people that we existed only as janitors to support and digitally clean up after everyone else. It seemed to just be some huge inferiority complex.
Does anyone else remember when posts like this were immediately downvoted to oblivion at Slashdot? It wasn't that long ago.
Are posts like this more common now because Digg has failed due to their moronic userbase? Why are these people incapable of learning from their mistakes?
We had a project that required scrubbing widget X from a file. Widget X was identified by headers within that file. It was absolutely vital that the content referred to by those headers was also missing, so simply looking at the headers was not good enough. People had to go through the file byte by byte to verify it, and it took a long time. No need to get into details (though it was fairly easy), I automated the task on my own time since I wasn't part of that group, and I provided it to them.
About 6 months later, I had a 500 dollar bonus on my paycheck and I was bumped up a step in my pay grade. It was little, but I certainly appreciated it. At no point did I think, "I could probably double dip as a consultant here." Had they asked me to do it on my own time, things may have gone differently.
Not offering any suggestions on what to do one way or another, but that's my experience.
A lot of people don't care if addon compatibility is "being handled better", when that means that only 3 of their addons completely fail to work for a few days whereas 4 of them broke last time (two weeks ago). Browser share is beginning to reflect this, with a drop of approximately 7% share in the last year alone. The way I and many others see it, there's very little reason to use Firefox beyond the add-ons. This is the type of stuff that needed to be handled in the alpha stage, not a new problem introduced and perpetuated several years into the product's release.
Glad to see that Mozilla has learned absolutely nothing from the Netscape fiasco.
On the bright side, something good is sure to rise from Firefox's ashes.
I said that I haven't seen an equal Dell (without Windows!) being $100 more than a Mac. You then countered that by showing me a similar Dell 50 dollars cheaper, with Windows.
Remind me again how I was wrong.
Am I the only one who stops reading as soon as they see ZOMG, 111one111, etc, even in jest? Of course, anyone who agrees with me already stopped reading as soon as I described what I was talking about.
If he provides a link, it'll just be a link of some other misinformed person spreading incorrect rumors. I wish they just wouldn't talk about stuff they have no knowledge of, because now we have yet another person who "heard it from someone". Just don't repeat it. Let it die already.
Slashdot Mirror
All three of the people who stand to benefit from a 2880x1800 15" screen agree.
There are other, rarer items from that era that consistently sell for much less. I won't speculate on the other possibilities, but technology enthusiast can safely be ruled out.
Even if you completely ignore things like the remote data communication, reverse engineering the mission computer would take forever if it was possible at all. You've got dozens of LRUs (GPS, INS, analog to digital converters, MMR, etc). A lot if not most of this stuff isn't going to be functional on the ground.
Consider for a moment a Weight on Wheels switch. It's going to do a lot of important stuff. For instance, that's going to be one of the key functions that tells the radar not to power up and shoot a bunch of radiation directly into the technician's nutsack. The MC even on an old C-130 is a couple hundred thousand lines of code. The MIL-STD-1553B bus being used supports multiple channels with each channel supporting 32 LRUs (ignoring broadcast and the like, for simplicity). Each LRU will have 32 subaddresses, and each subaddress will consist of 32 16-bit words. We're looking at millions of bits potentially changing every single cycle. How long does it take to isolate which one corresponds to weight on wheels? How about the one that the MC sends to the radar to tell it not to power up while on the ground?
Or how about a different, more simple example. The unit will have a terrain following mode. If it's on the ground, that simply isn't going to work. There's no way you can simulate the conditions for the mission computer to receive an obstacle warning from the radar, then send out an override to the controls to modify course.
Millions and millions of bits changing every cycle. Even on ancient technology that runs at 20 Hz, you're looking at 20 cycles per second (which consists of one frame). Each bit within each cycle of each frame might correspond to a very different discrete signal.
It can be done, but it's not happening within a year. They're building a shell, but the important stuff is useless to them without much, much more time.
Source: I am a mission computer developer.
Speed limit on the main street between myself and the nearest 24-hr convenience store half a mile away was 45 (I know, I should have walked. But all I wanted was to get it over with so I could sleep). I got pulled over for "drag racing" even though the streets were entirely empty other than myself and a cop waiting on a side road. To be fair, I was getting up to speed limit as quickly as possible so I could get it over with. But I was also "paced" at 60, which means he did not clock me but instead estimated my speed based on speeding up to catch up to me after turning off his side street. He included the streets where all this happened, so this gave me all the distances between incidences that I needed.
I used simple integrals to show the velocity/position relationship, along with the factory specifications of my car. End result is that the judge said he had no idea at all what I was talking about, and the ticket was dismissed because "it sounded right".
Charting and mission planning are done way before the plane is in the air. It's typically loaded via a 3.5" floppy or PCMCIA card and can be manipulated through the VDTs if any sort of changes are necessary. If an EMP or similar managed to take out the mission computers (which shouldn't happen, since they are hardened), no way would they still attempt to complete the mission.
I've never even stopped to think about what it stands for, but it looks like Digital Map Interface System. It's basically a wrapper around Falcon View that does most of the stuff mentioned in the original post. In practice, it seems to just be used to manipulate flight plans on the fly rather than load a new one if it needs to be altered mid-mission.
It'll charge the battery from almost dead to full in about an hour or so, so it's not one of those slow trickle charges that are basically useless if the device is on.
Now, if you're talking about being designed to *break* in two years, that might be a different story. But it would also be a story not as many people would be willing to swallow.
I'm not sure what you fly, but since it's Air Force then you probably already have DMIS or will be getting it in the next block cycle.
If we were specifically looking for someone with a master's or a particular certification, we would almost certainly go with an applicant who got their degree/cert from a brick and mortar school over the person with the online credentials (all other qualifications being the same). On the other hand, if we were looking for someone with a bachelor's and one applicant had a master's from an online degree, they would probably be in the forefront. Of course, they probably wouldn't be compensated beyond having a bachelor's given that that's all we had written out in the requirements.
Why do you only have like 5 posts, and every single one of them talks about what a visionary Steve Jobs is? It seems you created your account last week, when you "bought your first Mac".
It's not intuitive. It's obvious to you, who has extensive training. The technicalities behind IT are unimportant to everyone else. They make more money and perform more important actions. The company hires IT to mop up after them and provide some extra tools that could be beneficial to their job. Chances are, you have little to no knowledge whatsoever about their job. Other chances are, they're not posting on forums about how stupid you are because of it.
This is why everyone hates IT.
I used to work in IT back before I went to college. Without fail, every single coworker I ever had had some sort of weird fetish with being "in charge" of everyone else's data. Regular venting is normal of course, but I found myself constantly having to remind people that we existed only as janitors to support and digitally clean up after everyone else. It seemed to just be some huge inferiority complex.
Does anyone else remember when posts like this were immediately downvoted to oblivion at Slashdot? It wasn't that long ago. Are posts like this more common now because Digg has failed due to their moronic userbase? Why are these people incapable of learning from their mistakes?
About 6 months later, I had a 500 dollar bonus on my paycheck and I was bumped up a step in my pay grade. It was little, but I certainly appreciated it. At no point did I think, "I could probably double dip as a consultant here." Had they asked me to do it on my own time, things may have gone differently.
Not offering any suggestions on what to do one way or another, but that's my experience.
A lot of people don't care if addon compatibility is "being handled better", when that means that only 3 of their addons completely fail to work for a few days whereas 4 of them broke last time (two weeks ago). Browser share is beginning to reflect this, with a drop of approximately 7% share in the last year alone. The way I and many others see it, there's very little reason to use Firefox beyond the add-ons. This is the type of stuff that needed to be handled in the alpha stage, not a new problem introduced and perpetuated several years into the product's release.
Glad to see that Mozilla has learned absolutely nothing from the Netscape fiasco. On the bright side, something good is sure to rise from Firefox's ashes.
I said that I haven't seen an equal Dell (without Windows!) being $100 more than a Mac. You then countered that by showing me a similar Dell 50 dollars cheaper, with Windows. Remind me again how I was wrong.
Care to provide a link to that? I hear this myth often but I've yet to see it actually happen.
Am I the only one who stops reading as soon as they see ZOMG, 111one111, etc, even in jest? Of course, anyone who agrees with me already stopped reading as soon as I described what I was talking about.
Quit bitching about minor supporting points that add little to nothing to the scenario and answer the damn question.
Only on Slashdot can someone start a statement with "prolly" and provide no evidence at all, and be considered "Informative".
Are you sure your TV doesn't just suck?
If he provides a link, it'll just be a link of some other misinformed person spreading incorrect rumors. I wish they just wouldn't talk about stuff they have no knowledge of, because now we have yet another person who "heard it from someone". Just don't repeat it. Let it die already.
This is a very old rumor that is false.