This is the most pathetic list of "celebrities" I have ever seen - the UK equivalent of the "D-List", or worse. I doubt that anyone in the US would pay much attention to what Ted "Isaac your Bartender" Lange said about science issues, and these people look like the near-equivalent. When Kathy Griffin testifies before congress on the dangers of large hadron colliders, then, we should be worried.
But many people posting here know about as much about science and technology (outside of their narrow field of knowledge) as these people. And it never stops them. Of course, no one pays any attention to what we say, justifiably, but the posts about "well, look at the dumb celeb comments" will be followed in a few hours "OMG my hybrid gets 700 mpg coasting downhill, why doesn't the government measure that?" and "lets convene Nuremburg trials for anyone who doesn't sign the Kyoto treaty" type of high-level thinking.
So your theory is that because someone got pissy about a polygraph test, and got fired for it, they should turn traitor and help foreign governments, presumably with nuclear technology?
>Holian writes: 'Polygraphy is an insulting affront to >scientists, since a committee of the National Academy of >Sciences has declared that, beyond being inadmissible in >court, there is no scientific basis for polygraphs. In my >opinion, by agreeing to be polygraphed, one thereby >seriously jeopardizes his or her claim to being a >scientist, which is presumably the principal reason for >employment for many scientists at Los Alamos.'"
I sure hope he tells them that one down at the unemployment office!
>And as I sit there, circling Nurburgring over and over and >over (on lap 102 now), it's clear to me that this isn't fun >anymore. Polyphony Digital lost sight of the "fun" aspect >in GT3, I think. Endurance races existed before then, but >in GT3, they got ludicrous and now, it's just completely >insane. 24 hours??? For a single race??? And this is not >the only one- there's another 24h hour one, plus a bunch of >8 hours. 2-4 hours was bad enough in the earlier versions.
Uh, you do know you can switch to B-Spec at the pitstops. right?
It drives a lot like a real car. Hate to break it to anyone, but a Suzuki Cappicino IS really sluggish on the steering and a turd overall. The GT series is not nearly as game so much as it is a simulator. I have had two kissin' cousins of the cars in the, uh, game (GT4), and they drove very much like the real thing. To the point that when I was driving around Infineon, my (simulated) Lotus Turbo HC wanted to get sideways right before the carousel in exactly the same place as my (real life) Lotus Esprit S1 got sideways when I drove the track in 1990. I still can't see why it did it there, but, it was simulating a REAL effect.
The fact of the matter is that driving around in street cars in races can get tedious pretty quickly and you soon discover that your "super hot rod" passenger car has all sorts of bad things about it when you start pushing it to the limit. You either like it, or you get bored with it. But don't blame the simulation for having the same characteristics.
>I think banks are about the only people still using code >written in the 70s *sigh*
Not at all. Many serious users are still using code written in the late 50 and 60's. It's very common in the aerospace industry. Physics and mathematics hasn't changed since then, and some of of the code I see is FAR BETTER (clear, readable, and rigorously accurate) than most C++. We even have the original card decks for some of our stuff (although its been saved in files at this point). Our stuff isn't COBOL, of course, FORTRAN. Yes, *some* of it is God-awful to read, but it's *right* and there's no reason to take the time and expense to make it "better".
>Microsoft suggests that users 'not open or save Word >files,' even from trusted sources."
Most of us figured that out a long time ago. The REAL question is whether you will be able to tell the difference between file corrupted by this exploit and file corruption that just happens because of all the OTHER profound bugs.
>What do you want me to do, clap? I'd say ALL sysadmins are >heros because they need to put up with a stupid userbase >and inept managers that see their bottom line only.
That's the sysadmin attitude we have all come to know and love! It's nonsense like this that makes some sysadmins as popular and respected as an inflamed hemorrhoid. Sysadmins are the guys who are supposed to *SUPPORT* the users. Yes, some users are probably are stupid - about computers. That's why you have a sysadmin. The users are the ones that *do productive work*. In many cases *it's not their job* and *they shouldn't have to* to know the ins and outs of the OS or network. They hire people for that to RELIEVE the users of having to know, called sysadmins.
I have been lucky, I have had some good sysadmins over the years. I have also seen sysadmins with a 3-month course at the Airco institute and an MCSE certification screaming at people and calling them morons. Some of the "stupid lusers" were PHDs in Aerospace engineering with 40 years of experience who virtually *invented* the space industry. All they wanted was their computer to not bomb out every 45 minutes.
>>It's funny that the BBC is asking for proof of bias when >>its tilted coverage of the Iraqi war led British soldiers >>to conclude that BBC stood for "Baathist Broadcasting >>Corporation". > >And undoubtedly those soldiers have a completely unbiased >view of the war.
Yes, bunch of fools, thank goodness we have someone who knows all about it from watching TV and surfing DU to keep us straight on the real situation.
I live in San Jose, and essentially ALL of the local stations sound better with less compression artifacts than any Sirius channel. This includes the cheezy pop/"alternative" stations that are probably streaming 128Kbps internally, then converting it to FM at the end. One of the few locals that actually broadcasts full-range FM is the jazz station, and when everything is working it sounds absolutely amazing. FM is a very, very good system when it's used to it's fullest.
Sirius isn't even in the same ballpark. Once you get to the point you can hear the specific problems, they are EASY to pick out. It has nothing to do with the Sirius to system connection - the FM modulator, when you have a clean frequency, works well enough, but if you connect it directly OR listen to the low-bandwidth web radio link, they all have exactly the same problems, and sound very much alike. This is both in the car and in home. While I haven't been able to "a-b" with FM (for obvious reasons, KCSM and Sirius don't play the same thing at the same time), just switching back and forth on different songs between FM (modified Dyna FM3 tuner) and the Clarion Sirius PNP it's a complete no brainer, not even close. The only aspect of Sirius that even approaches FM quality is the low end (bass) and that could probably be fixed with some improvements to the tuner.
I haven't tried the new Sirius "premium" internet stream, and won't until someone tells me what the bit rate is. They claim "cd quality" but they used to do that with the radio, too, and it's clearly not.
>Both the sattelite radio services have incredibly horrid >sound. anythign with high frequencies has twinkle and other >nasty artifacts that are so prevalent it renders it >unlistenable to most people who like clear music. I have >went back to FM at times because Sirius and XM suck so bad.
That's pretty much been my experience as well. Of course they really won't tell you what the bit rate is, and it's my opinion (from interpreting the small amount of technical information that is available+the tangential references) is that they are dynamically changing it, so that any particular channel bitrate can VARY as the demands of the rest of the system changes. They are maximizing their 12MBPS satellite downlink, not any individual channel. BY far the most annoying characteristic is the high-frequency "reverb" artifact. I would also note that the stereo separation is very questionable - sounds like an old 60's tube amp (where the channels were magnetically coupled through the output transformers).
I tried to determine what the "equivalent" bit rate was by listening, and then encoding CDs into iTunes using various codecs and bitrates. The BEST channels sounded about like 96kbps AAC files, and many sounded about like 64 kbps on the music channels. The talk channels fell of the bottom end of the scale, iTunes doesn't go low enough. The BEST Sirius channels are nowhere near a good FM station (but see below) and after I have taken two long road trips trying to listen to Sirius, I can tell you it will really fatigue you to listen for a long time.
And, while I know it was entirely subjective, listening on a very-high-quality (but not "audiophool" nonsense) system, the sound degrades like it falls of a cliff when you get somewhere in the range of 128-192 kbps. Starting with a 20-bit HDCD, I could barely detect (and couldn't consistently tell), the difference until it got below about 256Kbps. 192 was consistently detectable but mostly OK. 128 was the edge of my tolerance for long-term listening. 96 was quite noticable (not just to me, but to my non-technical friends as well), and anything below that was crap. It was all randomly-arranged so I or no one else knew which was which until after. No one ever failed to get 192/128/96/64 in the right order on any source material, they never got the unaltered HDCD wrong (it was always ranked best), but they freqently couldn't get 16-bit CD, 320, and 256 in the right order.
I thought this was pretty conclusive. I still encode everything from CD with Apple lossless for storage/backup, but if I ever need to, I will compress it to 320 AAC for listening, since it cuts the size down so dramatically.
> >Now we have robot radio stations around here that are mp3 >based and LOW bitrate mp3 based at that. My daughter was >listening to one of them and I asked, "when did you get a >XM raio in your room?" she let me know she was listening to >the new Rock FM station. > >Current state of music is swirling the toilet. I havent >heard a decently mastered CD in decades, radio and supposed >"CD QUALITY" Digital FM and Sattelite all sounds worse than >128kbps mp3's on a $6.00 mp3 player.
Absolutely. The sad fact is that most commercial music recordings and essentially all commercial radio stations are using digital signal processing at every step, and unless it's done with quality in mind, it's highly compressed, both in terms of bit rate/digital artifacts, and with compressed dynamics to make it "sound louder" and sound better on a car radio, with the high ambient noise floor. I fear the day that regular FM goes off the air, and that the idiot record companies collapse and all music is delivered as downloads. Because it will be compressed, and the real McCoy will not be available. CD is not the end-all and be-all of recording, but, it WAS designed to not lose any musically relevant information by guys who actually understood sampling.
>The USA, a decadent, capitalistic society, that enslaves >its people through corporations, and calls itself a >Republic, is in North America, between Canada and Mexico. >Their Government is run by decadent wealthy politicians who >use their political power for more gain. Unlike your >illustrious leaders here in China, they do not care about >their constituants.
Hey, wait a minute, that's not a Chinese Wikipedia entry - it's every third post on Slashdot!
From the summary: > Has the industry cheated us of the benefits of civil > UAVs by focussing on the demands of the military?"
Firstly, what "industry" would you be referring to? The issue is that the Federal Government/FCC will not grant the radio spectrum for the UAVs, not that some "industry" will not permit it. Secondly, this has nothing to do with the existence of military UAVs - there would still be spectrum (and aviation safety) issues whether or not the military has UAVs. Thirdly, it's not at all clear that we are missing out on ANY important benefits that cannot be attained under current law.
>I mean, there's a theory that the Sphinx was built about 10,000 >years earlier than was previously thought, by an entirely >different civilization. It's not widely believed, but the guy >does have some evidence.
It's actually very compelling evidence - essentially lots of evidence of water erosion in the enclosure, which could only have happened when the climate was much wetter than when the pyramids were built. Closer to the end of the last Ice Age, and nothing like the erosion around the pyramids themselves. The guy is a geologist and came at it from a completely objective perspective.
What was plain scary/laughable about it was that when he presented his hard-science analysis at an Egyptology seminar, they all said "where's the evidence?! You haven't shown me a a pottery shard or a gylph!". As if those, and the romantic/subjective conjecture that comes in the interpretation, was better than an well-founded scientific analysis. They simply couldn't break out of their mind-set.
One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other. There's no monetary limitation preventing Africans from having clean drinking water, or, put another way, why do you think more money will solve the drinking water problem? Trillions of dollars have AREADY been spent on such things, and it hasn't solved the problem.
It also accurately predicts the frequency of dupe posts on Slashdot. Currently, the predicted dupe rate is 2.314x10^6 Hz, or, a period of 5 days. Remarkable accuracy.
>It's very American to automatically respond to this kind >of thing as though it was a threat. Stop acting like a >teenager./. is not remotely representative of average American values. Neither are any media US reports you might hear.
>>the open source community has no way of >>validating code, and blindly accepts any >>code offered, assuming that there's no >>patent infringing code in it. >> >Of course it hasn't. Are you willing to >pay the lawyers? Patents are stupid and >most of OSS developers just ignore it, >because if we cared about respecting >patents we would need to shut down most >of the OSS software.
What in the heck are you talking about? They're trying to keep people from stealing stuff, and the tag comes off when you get it home. How is this "sleepwalking into a survellience society"? Not every use of RFID technology is Big Brother come to fruition.
An even better question is, why does it need to know the calendar date at all? I have very intimate knowledge of 4 different spacecraft software designs (two of them at least on the order of the shuttle flight software), and none of them calculate the gregorian date directly, only one knows anything at all about calendar dates, and that is used for a VERY trivial purpose that wouldn't be affected by this sort of bug. Julian Date, or some variation thereof, is the usual time reference on spacecraft, and that doesn't know or care about year rollovers since it doesn't know anything about years. The only thing I can imagine is that someone on the ground used IRIG to time-tag commands, and they found a bug in the area that converts IRIG to Julian, but that's just a guess.
Disregard the comments about how "any TRS-80 can figure out the date, what a bunch of losers". This sort of software is fantastically far more critical and rigorously designed that resemblence to a general-purpose interactive OS, you can't even reasonably talk about them in the same sentence.
I think there must be some details left out of TFA. there has to be something rather more subtle going on that it appears. I will try to check my contacts in the shuttle software world and see if I can find anything out.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the most pathetic list of "celebrities" I have ever seen - the UK equivalent of the "D-List", or worse. I doubt that anyone in the US would pay much attention to what Ted "Isaac your Bartender" Lange said about science issues, and these people look like the near-equivalent. When Kathy Griffin testifies before congress on the dangers of large hadron colliders, then, we should be worried.
But many people posting here know about as much about science and technology (outside of their narrow field of knowledge) as these people. And it never stops them. Of course, no one pays any attention to what we say, justifiably, but the posts about "well, look at the dumb celeb comments" will be followed in a few hours "OMG my hybrid gets 700 mpg coasting downhill, why doesn't the government measure that?" and "lets convene Nuremburg trials for anyone who doesn't sign the Kyoto treaty" type of high-level thinking.
Brett
So your theory is that because someone got pissy about a polygraph test, and got fired for it, they should turn traitor and help foreign governments, presumably with nuclear technology?
Brett
>Holian writes: 'Polygraphy is an insulting affront to
>scientists, since a committee of the National Academy of
>Sciences has declared that, beyond being inadmissible in
>court, there is no scientific basis for polygraphs. In my
>opinion, by agreeing to be polygraphed, one thereby
>seriously jeopardizes his or her claim to being a
>scientist, which is presumably the principal reason for
>employment for many scientists at Los Alamos.'"
I sure hope he tells them that one down at the unemployment office!
Brett
> We like to think we're better than the US
That's cute!
Brett
>And as I sit there, circling Nurburgring over and over and
>over (on lap 102 now), it's clear to me that this isn't fun
>anymore. Polyphony Digital lost sight of the "fun" aspect
>in GT3, I think. Endurance races existed before then, but
>in GT3, they got ludicrous and now, it's just completely
>insane. 24 hours??? For a single race??? And this is not
>the only one- there's another 24h hour one, plus a bunch of
>8 hours. 2-4 hours was bad enough in the earlier versions.
Uh, you do know you can switch to B-Spec at the pitstops. right?
Brett
It drives a lot like a real car. Hate to break it to anyone, but a Suzuki Cappicino IS really sluggish on the steering and a turd overall. The GT series is not nearly as game so much as it is a simulator. I have had two kissin' cousins of the cars in the, uh, game (GT4), and they drove very much like the real thing. To the point that when I was driving around Infineon, my (simulated) Lotus Turbo HC wanted to get sideways right before the carousel in exactly the same place as my (real life) Lotus Esprit S1 got sideways when I drove the track in 1990. I still can't see why it did it there, but, it was simulating a REAL effect.
The fact of the matter is that driving around in street cars in races can get tedious pretty quickly and you soon discover that your "super hot rod" passenger car has all sorts of bad things about it when you start pushing it to the limit. You either like it, or you get bored with it. But don't blame the simulation for having the same characteristics.
Brett
>I hope one of the health and safety issues they look
>in to is the effect a cell phone has on a trachea
>when forcefully inserted
Trachea?
Brett
>I think banks are about the only people still using code
>written in the 70s *sigh*
Not at all. Many serious users are still using code written in the late 50 and 60's. It's very common in the aerospace industry. Physics and mathematics hasn't changed since then, and some of of the code I see is FAR BETTER (clear, readable, and rigorously accurate) than most C++. We even have the original card decks for some of our stuff (although its been saved in files at this point). Our stuff isn't COBOL, of course, FORTRAN. Yes, *some* of it is God-awful to read, but it's *right* and there's no reason to take the time and expense to make it "better".
Brett
>Microsoft suggests that users 'not open or save Word
>files,' even from trusted sources."
Most of us figured that out a long time ago. The REAL question is whether you will be able to tell the difference between file corrupted by this exploit and file corruption that just happens because of all the OTHER profound bugs.
Brett
>What do you want me to do, clap? I'd say ALL sysadmins are
>heros because they need to put up with a stupid userbase
>and inept managers that see their bottom line only.
That's the sysadmin attitude we have all come to know and love! It's nonsense like this that makes some sysadmins as popular and respected as an inflamed hemorrhoid. Sysadmins are the guys who are supposed to *SUPPORT* the users. Yes, some users are probably are stupid - about computers. That's why you have a sysadmin. The users are the ones that *do productive work*. In many cases *it's not their job* and *they shouldn't have to* to know the ins and outs of the OS or network. They hire people for that to RELIEVE the users of having to know, called sysadmins.
I have been lucky, I have had some good sysadmins over the years. I have also seen sysadmins with a 3-month course at the Airco institute and an MCSE certification screaming at people and calling them morons. Some of the "stupid lusers" were PHDs in Aerospace engineering with 40 years of experience who virtually *invented* the space industry. All they wanted was their computer to not bomb out every 45 minutes.
Brett
>>It's funny that the BBC is asking for proof of bias when
>>its tilted coverage of the Iraqi war led British soldiers
>>to conclude that BBC stood for "Baathist Broadcasting
>>Corporation".
>
>And undoubtedly those soldiers have a completely unbiased
>view of the war.
Yes, bunch of fools, thank goodness we have someone who knows all about it from watching TV and surfing DU to keep us straight on the real situation.
Brett
I live in San Jose, and essentially ALL of the local stations sound better with less compression artifacts than any Sirius channel. This includes the cheezy pop/"alternative" stations that are probably streaming 128Kbps internally, then converting it to FM at the end. One of the few locals that actually broadcasts full-range FM is the jazz station, and when everything is working it sounds absolutely amazing. FM is a very, very good system when it's used to it's fullest.
Sirius isn't even in the same ballpark. Once you get to the point you can hear the specific problems, they are EASY to pick out. It has nothing to do with the Sirius to system connection - the FM modulator, when you have a clean frequency, works well enough, but if you connect it directly OR listen to the low-bandwidth web radio link, they all have exactly the same problems, and sound very much alike. This is both in the car and in home. While I haven't been able to "a-b" with FM (for obvious reasons, KCSM and Sirius don't play the same thing at the same time), just switching back and forth on different songs between FM (modified Dyna FM3 tuner) and the Clarion Sirius PNP it's a complete no brainer, not even close. The only aspect of Sirius that even approaches FM quality is the low end (bass) and that could probably be fixed with some improvements to the tuner.
I haven't tried the new Sirius "premium" internet stream, and won't until someone tells me what the bit rate is. They claim "cd quality" but they used to do that with the radio, too, and it's clearly not.
>Both the sattelite radio services have incredibly horrid
>sound. anythign with high frequencies has twinkle and other
>nasty artifacts that are so prevalent it renders it
>unlistenable to most people who like clear music. I have
>went back to FM at times because Sirius and XM suck so bad.
That's pretty much been my experience as well. Of course they really won't tell you what the bit rate is, and it's my opinion (from interpreting the small amount of technical information that is available+the tangential references) is that they are dynamically changing it, so that any particular channel bitrate can VARY as the demands of the rest of the system changes. They are maximizing their 12MBPS satellite downlink, not any individual channel. BY far the most annoying characteristic is the high-frequency "reverb" artifact. I would also note that the stereo separation is very questionable - sounds like an old 60's tube amp (where the channels were magnetically coupled through the output transformers).
I tried to determine what the "equivalent" bit rate was by listening, and then encoding CDs into iTunes using various codecs and bitrates. The BEST channels sounded about like 96kbps AAC files, and many sounded about like 64 kbps on the music channels. The talk channels fell of the bottom end of the scale, iTunes doesn't go low enough. The BEST Sirius channels are nowhere near a good FM station (but see below) and after I have taken two long road trips trying to listen to Sirius, I can tell you it will really fatigue you to listen for a long time.
And, while I know it was entirely subjective, listening on a very-high-quality (but not "audiophool" nonsense) system, the sound degrades like it falls of a cliff when you get somewhere in the range of 128-192 kbps. Starting with a 20-bit HDCD, I could barely detect (and couldn't consistently tell), the difference until it got below about 256Kbps. 192 was consistently detectable but mostly OK. 128 was the edge of my tolerance for long-term listening. 96 was quite noticable (not just to me, but to my non-technical friends as well), and anything below that was crap. It was all randomly-arranged so I or no one else knew which was which until after. No one ever failed to get 192/128/96/64 in the right order on any source material, they never got the unaltered HDCD wrong (it was always ranked best), but they freqently couldn't get 16-bit CD, 320, and 256 in the right order.
I thought this was pretty conclusive. I still encode everything from CD with Apple lossless for storage/backup, but if I ever need to, I will compress it to 320 AAC for listening, since it cuts the size down so dramatically.
>
>Now we have robot radio stations around here that are mp3
>based and LOW bitrate mp3 based at that. My daughter was
>listening to one of them and I asked, "when did you get a
>XM raio in your room?" she let me know she was listening to
>the new Rock FM station.
>
>Current state of music is swirling the toilet. I havent
>heard a decently mastered CD in decades, radio and supposed
>"CD QUALITY" Digital FM and Sattelite all sounds worse than
>128kbps mp3's on a $6.00 mp3 player.
Absolutely. The sad fact is that most commercial music recordings and essentially all commercial radio stations are using digital signal processing at every step, and unless it's done with quality in mind, it's highly compressed, both in terms of bit rate/digital artifacts, and with compressed dynamics to make it "sound louder" and sound better on a car radio, with the high ambient noise floor. I fear the day that regular FM goes off the air, and that the idiot record companies collapse and all music is delivered as downloads. Because it will be compressed, and the real McCoy will not be available. CD is not the end-all and be-all of recording, but, it WAS designed to not lose any musically relevant information by guys who actually understood sampling.
Brett
>The USA, a decadent, capitalistic society, that enslaves
>its people through corporations, and calls itself a
>Republic, is in North America, between Canada and Mexico.
>Their Government is run by decadent wealthy politicians who
>use their political power for more gain. Unlike your
>illustrious leaders here in China, they do not care about
>their constituants.
Hey, wait a minute, that's not a Chinese Wikipedia entry - it's every third post on Slashdot!
Brett
From the summary:
> Has the industry cheated us of the benefits of civil
> UAVs by focussing on the demands of the military?"
Firstly, what "industry" would you be referring to? The issue is that the Federal Government/FCC will not grant the radio spectrum for the UAVs, not that some "industry" will not permit it. Secondly, this has nothing to do with the existence of military UAVs - there would still be spectrum (and aviation safety) issues whether or not the military has UAVs. Thirdly, it's not at all clear that we are missing out on ANY important benefits that cannot be attained under current law.
Brett
>I mean, there's a theory that the Sphinx was built about 10,000
>years earlier than was previously thought, by an entirely
>different civilization. It's not widely believed, but the guy
>does have some evidence.
It's actually very compelling evidence - essentially lots of evidence of water erosion in the enclosure, which could only have happened when the climate was much wetter than when the pyramids were built. Closer to the end of the last Ice Age, and nothing like the erosion around the pyramids themselves. The guy is a geologist and came at it from a completely objective perspective.
What was plain scary/laughable about it was that when he presented his hard-science analysis at an Egyptology seminar, they all said "where's the evidence?! You haven't shown me a a pottery shard or a gylph!". As if those, and the romantic/subjective conjecture that comes in the interpretation, was better than an well-founded scientific analysis. They simply couldn't break out of their mind-set.
Brett
One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other. There's no monetary limitation preventing Africans from having clean drinking water, or, put another way, why do you think more money will solve the drinking water problem? Trillions of dollars have AREADY been spent on such things, and it hasn't solved the problem.
Brett
I would say that's proof that it was a beta version. As was my post...
Brett
It also accurately predicts the frequency of dupe posts on Slashdot. Currently, the predicted dupe rate is 2.314x10^6 Hz, or, a period of 5 days. Remarkable accuracy.
Brett
>It's very American to automatically respond to this kind /. is not remotely representative of average American values. Neither are any media US reports you might hear.
>of thing as though it was a threat. Stop acting like a
>teenager.
Brett
>>the open source community has no way of
>>validating code, and blindly accepts any
>>code offered, assuming that there's no
>>patent infringing code in it.
>>
>Of course it hasn't. Are you willing to
>pay the lawyers? Patents are stupid and
>most of OSS developers just ignore it,
>because if we cared about respecting
>patents we would need to shut down most
>of the OSS software.
That's not much of an argument.
Brtt
What in the heck are you talking about? They're trying to keep people from stealing stuff, and the tag comes off when you get it home. How is this "sleepwalking into a survellience society"? Not every use of RFID technology is Big Brother come to fruition.
Brett
An even better question is, why does it need to know the calendar date at all? I have very intimate knowledge of 4 different spacecraft software designs (two of them at least on the order of the shuttle flight software), and none of them calculate the gregorian date directly, only one knows anything at all about calendar dates, and that is used for a VERY trivial purpose that wouldn't be affected by this sort of bug. Julian Date, or some variation thereof, is the usual time reference on spacecraft, and that doesn't know or care about year rollovers since it doesn't know anything about years. The only thing I can imagine is that someone on the ground used IRIG to time-tag commands, and they found a bug in the area that converts IRIG to Julian, but that's just a guess.
Disregard the comments about how "any TRS-80 can figure out the date, what a bunch of losers". This sort of software is fantastically far more critical and rigorously designed that resemblence to a general-purpose interactive OS, you can't even reasonably talk about them in the same sentence.
I think there must be some details left out of TFA. there has to be something rather more subtle going on that it appears. I will try to check my contacts in the shuttle software world and see if I can find anything out.
Brett
+1, Funny and/or Insightful
It can't be a series of buzzwords, as neither "synergy" nor "paradigm" appeared.
Brett