That's why autopilots are typically engaged on commercial aircraft throughout nearly the entire flight. When human pilots take control--usually during takeoff and landing, and occasionally in mid flight--it's largely because they need to stay in practice, not because the autopilot would be unable to fly safely. (In fact, in bad weather, the FAA may require that pilots allow the autopilot and FMS, which don't rely on visual cues, to land the plane.)
So at least according to this article the planes are capable of landing on autopilot but typically the pilot does take over during landing, so it does indeed look like this could be a problem.
Don't commercial airplanes land themselves anyway? How would blinding the pilot cause a problem if this is the case? Now if it is a guide for a surface to air missile, that is a different story.
I dunno about UPS, but FedEX offers a "before 10am" service, which causes the driver to meander all over town driving like a bat out of hell to get all the packages delivered before 10am. But otherwise yeah they have a standard route.
UPS Inc., for example, will distribute new hand-held computers to its 100,000 U.S. delivery truck drivers early next year..
I wonder how hard it would be for a third party to get this information? Knowing exactly where a big van full of boxes of stuff is right now would make it quite a bit easier to pillage said truck wouldn't it? Or maybe a competitor could conveniently get people to interfere with traffic and slow them down along their routes, things like that.
This past summer, for example, managers at Metropolitan Lumber & Hardware in New York worried when a new driver dispatched to a delivery just six blocks away still hadn't arrived after 3 1/2 hours. But using GPS, dispatchers soon tracked him down, "goofing off" on the other side of Manhattan, said Larry Charity, the company's information technology manager.
Remember, the way to get out of this is to lock yourself in your trunk when the boss shows up.
I am looking forward to an automatted "potty tracker" that keeps track of how often I and my coworkers visit the restroom each day. Maybe everyone can give their tracking devices to the new intern (wow look everyone is in the bathroom at the same time).
Thankfully apache kicked their butt here, or else you wouldn't even be able to use any other browser except IE to surf the web. I mean, imagine if microsoft controlled as high a percentage of the web servers as they do browsers.
The two U.S. and Russian astronauts on the International Space Station had to rely on a candy-laden diet for five weeks because their predecessors raided the pantry. "Both of us ended up losing a few pounds," U.S. astronaut Leroy Chiao said in a news conference from the station on Wednesday.
I can see it now, the new "candy only space station" diet fad. I can't wait to see how many pounds I lost after eating fudge and chocolate for the past two weeks.
My favorite quote from the article: Once one learns the complex mathematical language required to express his ideas, Einstein's theories are the simplest and most obvious of any in physics.
And ummm, how many semesters of college level mathematics must one pass to really understand what he is saying?
What are you doing that you think is effective in punishing spammers or their spam-site sponsors?
Sending xmas cards to inmates about to be released from prisons in their state with the spammers name and home address as the return address with sincere hopes that they will come visit once they get out. Plus I get to use up all these extra xmas cards instead of packing them away for next year.
Now the news guys need to get together and start calling him and saying how pissed they are that they lost their jobs for not checking the facts, and right after xmas no less. When he is finally reduced to a gibbering crying mess they can tell him, "Just kidding". I bet he would get a big laugh out of that lemme tell ya.
...the lightning rod, which was invented independently by two different people in two different places.
I am guessing lightning rods have been around since people first created metal rods and stood out in fields during lightning storms. The hard part isn't making a lightning rod, but staying alive long enough to claim to be the inventor.
I wonder if it could be (safely) bumped into a close enough orbit around earth to be useful? Or maybe move it into one of the LaGrange(sp?) points (slowing it down might be kinda hard). It might make a nifty little space station, or be worth mining?
Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at www.primidi.com [primidi.com]. It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals.
Sweet I will have to go check out this website, thanks for the link! Oh wait maybe I should read the rest of your post first....
I've been a strong advocate of the social bookmarking service named del.icio.us....
Nothing says "thanks for providing a great service" like a good post-holiday slashdotting. Note: the burning smell coming from the server room isn't fudge cooking.
Oh and I noticed they have a "most active" list of links, but no porn section???
Because, well, I will be dead. But just in case, I left a provision to put aside $50 so that family members could pay for a psychic to ask me for anything that I may have forgotten to write down somewhere.
A new study of traffic accidents conducted on Virginia roads has found, unsurprisingly, that many car crashes are the result of driver distraction. But while cell phones are increasingly fingered as dangerous in-car distractions, the study, conducted by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), found that old-fashioned rubbernecking was the biggest single cause, accounting for 16 percent of distraction-related crashes.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why autopilots are typically engaged on commercial aircraft throughout nearly the entire flight. When human pilots take control--usually during takeoff and landing, and occasionally in mid flight--it's largely because they need to stay in practice, not because the autopilot would be unable to fly safely. (In fact, in bad weather, the FAA may require that pilots allow the autopilot and FMS, which don't rely on visual cues, to land the plane.)
So at least according to this article the planes are capable of landing on autopilot but typically the pilot does take over during landing, so it does indeed look like this could be a problem.
Don't commercial airplanes land themselves anyway? How would blinding the pilot cause a problem if this is the case? Now if it is a guide for a surface to air missile, that is a different story.
I dunno about UPS, but FedEX offers a "before 10am" service, which causes the driver to meander all over town driving like a bat out of hell to get all the packages delivered before 10am. But otherwise yeah they have a standard route.
I wonder how hard it would be for a third party to get this information? Knowing exactly where a big van full of boxes of stuff is right now would make it quite a bit easier to pillage said truck wouldn't it? Or maybe a competitor could conveniently get people to interfere with traffic and slow them down along their routes, things like that.
Remember, the way to get out of this is to lock yourself in your trunk when the boss shows up.
I am looking forward to an automatted "potty tracker" that keeps track of how often I and my coworkers visit the restroom each day. Maybe everyone can give their tracking devices to the new intern (wow look everyone is in the bathroom at the same time).
Thankfully apache kicked their butt here, or else you wouldn't even be able to use any other browser except IE to surf the web. I mean, imagine if microsoft controlled as high a percentage of the web servers as they do browsers.
I can see it now, the new "candy only space station" diet fad. I can't wait to see how many pounds I lost after eating fudge and chocolate for the past two weeks.
Once one learns the complex mathematical language required to express his ideas, Einstein's theories are the simplest and most obvious of any in physics.
And ummm, how many semesters of college level mathematics must one pass to really understand what he is saying?
Yeah but the owners of the satellite probably wouldn't be too pleased. I assume a launch from a russian silo won't trigger any alarms here anywhere?
Seriously however, I can't think of a better use for old Russian ICBMs.
It seems like this problem would take care of itself, darwin style, after a tsunami or two.
Sending xmas cards to inmates about to be released from prisons in their state with the spammers name and home address as the return address with sincere hopes that they will come visit once they get out. Plus I get to use up all these extra xmas cards instead of packing them away for next year.
Now the news guys need to get together and start calling him and saying how pissed they are that they lost their jobs for not checking the facts, and right after xmas no less. When he is finally reduced to a gibbering crying mess they can tell him, "Just kidding". I bet he would get a big laugh out of that lemme tell ya.
I am guessing lightning rods have been around since people first created metal rods and stood out in fields during lightning storms. The hard part isn't making a lightning rod, but staying alive long enough to claim to be the inventor.
What is the international symbol for "Start looting now"?
I wonder if it could be (safely) bumped into a close enough orbit around earth to be useful? Or maybe move it into one of the LaGrange(sp?) points (slowing it down might be kinda hard). It might make a nifty little space station, or be worth mining?
If you ever get a chance to bet on an asteroid wiping out humanity, make sure you bet that it won't; otherwise even if you win you can't collect.
Plus if you add the digits in 2029 you get 13! Ehh, maybe we should start building the nuclear bomb carrying rockets right now?
If my article is marked as offtopic and the parent is marked as a troll, does that mean my response is actually insightful???
Sweet I will have to go check out this website, thanks for the link! Oh wait maybe I should read the rest of your post first....
Nothing says "thanks for providing a great service" like a good post-holiday slashdotting. Note: the burning smell coming from the server room isn't fudge cooking.
Oh and I noticed they have a "most active" list of links, but no porn section???
Besides, like I always say about flying: flying is easy, its the landing part that scares the crap outta me.
Because, well, I will be dead. But just in case, I left a provision to put aside $50 so that family members could pay for a psychic to ask me for anything that I may have forgotten to write down somewhere.
This is totally offtopic, but you should enable comments on your journal entries :-)
here is the full story
And here is the first bit of the article:
A new study of traffic accidents conducted on Virginia roads has found, unsurprisingly, that many car crashes are the result of driver distraction. But while cell phones are increasingly fingered as dangerous in-car distractions, the study, conducted by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), found that old-fashioned rubbernecking was the biggest single cause, accounting for 16 percent of distraction-related crashes.