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User: MichaelSmith

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  1. Re:And that's half the story on MH370 Beacon Battery May Have Been Expired · · Score: 1

    Maybe they caught fire.

  2. Re:Wired article wheel fire on A Year On, What Flight Simulators Can't Prove About Flight MH370 · · Score: 1

    was a 7,000 foot runway

    Yeah thats Palau Langkawi but while the runway is long, everything else is wrong with that destination. The runway is only really usable from the west, and terrain to the east would make an abort for a heavy aircraft problematic. There is only a small hospital on the island, a couple of police stations and a few ambulances. Its not really set up for night operations either. A return to KLIA would have been the standard way to go, its a bit longer but the aircraft was loaded with fuel and may have needed to dump or burn off fuel to land anyway.

  3. Re:Wired article wheel fire on A Year On, What Flight Simulators Can't Prove About Flight MH370 · · Score: 2

    Foul play is beyond question. The questions are who and why.

    Yeah there was an interview with a former chief pilot of Malaysia Airlines, and he seemed pretty convinced the captain stole the plane. In particular, the way the aircraft overflew Penang, which was the captain's home city. A day before the flight his wife and kids had gone back to their house in Penang.

  4. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency on A Year On, What Flight Simulators Can't Prove About Flight MH370 · · Score: 2

    I would still put

    0 - Respirate at the top in a pressurised aircraft.

    And since the crew did turn west, we need to explain why. Did they have a navigation failure? Thats strange with the Malay peninsula lit up around them.

  5. Re: Rockwell Collins CMU-900 overheat cut off radi on A Year On, What Flight Simulators Can't Prove About Flight MH370 · · Score: 1

    Did it also cut off ADS-B and ADS-C?

    Palau Langkawi might have been closer by a few minutes but its not set up for night operations, doesn't have substantial medical or emergency facilities, and has a big hill at the eastern end of the runway. The logical action would be to return to KLIA. To do that they would have to overfly the Cameron Highlands again, but its only 6000 feet high.

  6. Are we sure it went south? on A Year On, What Flight Simulators Can't Prove About Flight MH370 · · Score: 1

    As I understand it, doppler shift data from the satellite link points to a southerly trajectory, but the transciever in the satellite ground station compensates for doppler, leaving only noise. So much that we assume about the aircraft assumes the doppler data is correct, but it depends on a few Hz of shift.

  7. For me a bike is a personal thing on Inside Bratislava's Low-Cost, Open Source Bike Share Solution · · Score: 2

    If I can't ride my bike I will walk or take public transport.

  8. 1994 film The Puppet Masters on 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress' Coming To the Big Screen · · Score: 1

    100% not worth seeing, unfortunately. I hope the producers don't ruin the reputation of a great book in this case.

  9. Re:It should stand two degrees, for sure! on 20-Year-Old Military Weather Satellite Explodes In Orbit · · Score: 1

    It would be very dumb to reveal your capability in that way.

  10. Re:It should stand two degrees, for sure! on 20-Year-Old Military Weather Satellite Explodes In Orbit · · Score: 1

    Hard to believe that China would go out of their way to piss the USA off by blowing up their satellite. Doesn't seem consistent with their style.

  11. Re:Woz rolling in his grave on L.A. School Superintendent Folds on Laptops-For-Kids Program · · Score: 1

    Yeah ours was the Orange but I assumed it was from Taiwan or similar. The case was a simple steel rectangle. Nothing fancy and I thought at the time they had ripped off the firmware.

  12. Re:Woz rolling in his grave on L.A. School Superintendent Folds on Laptops-For-Kids Program · · Score: 1

    My school had a few asian knockoffs of the apple as well.

  13. ...and nobody will have to get nailed to a tree. on No Tech Bubble Here, Says CNN: "This Time It's Different." · · Score: 1

    The Vogons disagreed.

  14. ssh on Samsung Smart TVs Don't Encrypt the Voice Data They Collect · · Score: 1

    Next time use port 22. Its dead simple.

  15. Where is Ccairo? on Scientists In China Predict Pentagonal Graphene · · Score: 2

    I have never heard of that place.

  16. Re:A database... on EU Preparing Vast Air Passenger Database · · Score: 1

    some form of ID.

    Yes somebody is keeping a list. And anyway, logging air passengers doesn't require a vast database by today's standards.

  17. Speed of sound on Boston Dynamics Introduces Their Newest Four-Legged Robot, 'Spot' · · Score: 1

    But is it allowed to break the speed of sound in urban areas?

  18. Re:Good Grief on Dell Venue 8 7000, "World's Thinnest Tablet" With Intel Moorefield Atom Reviewed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wouldn't mind having a phone as thin and light as a credit card. Then it would feel like a... credit card, which you know, feels fine in my hand.

    Until you sit on it, forget it's there and run it through the was, or leave it on a pile of paper on your desk that later gets shredded...

    Funnily enough similar arguments were made against VLSI microprocessors in the days of mainframes. What if I left my computer in my pants pocket and it got washed?

  19. Re:Lift? on NASA Considers Autonomous Martian Helicopter To Augment Future Rovers · · Score: 1

    There is a lot more Methane in the two smaller giant planets.

  20. Re:Lift? on NASA Considers Autonomous Martian Helicopter To Augment Future Rovers · · Score: 1

    The only place in the solar system better for balloons is Venus

    You forgot the gas giants.

  21. Re:Wat need does it fulfill better on Could Tizen Be the Next Android? · · Score: 2

    It would be like TinyBASIC or MicroVMS. A temporary solution to take advantage of cheap hardware but a year down the track, good hardware would be cheap enough to run the real thing.

  22. Re:The Dangers of the World on Parents Investigated For Neglect For Letting Kids Walk Home Alone · · Score: 1

    Or more to the point they are more likely to suffer from not learning how to take care of themselves.

  23. Re:The Dangers of the World on Parents Investigated For Neglect For Letting Kids Walk Home Alone · · Score: 1

    At 10 years old I was getting up at 4:30 in the morning to deliver newspapers (1980's Los Angeles County). I would never allow my children to do this today

    Why do you think "today" is any different?

  24. Re:Not dependently type on Rust Programming Language Reaches 1.0 Alpha · · Score: 1

    How did they get dominant in the first place

    Less work to do up front makes it easy to get started. Not your problem if a 100000 line code base is unmaintainable down the track

  25. Re:Good ol' 777 on Sloppy File Permissions Make Red Star OS Vulnerable · · Score: 1

    Yes I agree thats way more secure.