I'm afraid you're wrong. Following your advice -- to turn "where you want to go" -- will likely end up with the car out of control and in a spin.
If you are on ice, rain or gravel with your car is sliding to the left and you turn the wheel "where you want to go" (which is, most likely, to the "right") you simply won't recover. By turning right as the car drifts left, you're not only going to cause the front wheels to eventually lock up, which is bad enough, but you will also end up spinning. Similarly, if you misjudged a turn and entered faster than you should and are now seeing your car understeer (as most modern, front-wheel drive vehicles will) turning the steering wheel "where you want to go" won't help you recover either.
Driver's ed courses are correct -- steer into the slide. And I'm not stating this information just by relying on "driver's ed courses." I've been racing since I was very young on most anything you can imagine -- from karts, to rally cars.
ksemlerK, clearly you don't even have a minute of winter driving or gravel experience. Frankly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone quite so misinformed about what to do. I hope that nobody heeds your advice and that I never run into you on on the road...
If your car is sliding on gravel, rain or ice you want to steer INTO the slide, not in the opposite direction. Te same applies if you misjudged a turn. If you end up going in a turn too fast and your car is understeering or oversteering. Simply reduce the turning angle on the steering wheel. This will effectively result in the increase of the turning radius.
Playing with the throttle in the middle of a turn when the car is sliding while cause dramatic weight shifts and result in behavior that you may not be expecting -- the car will likely oversteer and most drivers will NOT be able to recover.
The IOC (and various Country Olympic Committees) have been abusing this stuff for a while now. Take a look at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010007020_olympian06m.html for some more insanity.
In Beijing they would cover brands up with tape. On faucets. On light switches. And just about everywhere else. Check it out here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080818/1248442014.shtml
This is just complete insanity. I whole-heartedly that it might be high time we say to the IOC and the USOC to go fuck themselves, pull out of the revelant treaties and start a new high-profile sporting event.
Unfortunately, they can -- whether it's right or wrong is a whole 'nother story. There are a number of treaties that nations that participate in the Olympics must sign. One of them is the Nairobi Treaty on Protection of the Olympic Symbol which basically grants the IOC a sort of super-duper trademark. This is just one of the many relevant treaties related to the Olympics and the "rights" of the IOC! Additionally, athletes who participate in the Olympics also have to sign a rather extensive agreement, which, among other things, prohibit them from making any "side promotion deals" during the run-up to and until the end of the Olympics.
Again, I'm not suggesting that this is right -- or even sane. But, the way that things are, it seems that the IOC is within its specially crafted legal rights to ask UVEX to not refer to the Athlete formerly known as Lindsay Kildow.
Did you even bother to read the article and understand how this works, or are you just spewing stuff out? It cannot be automated! This is a hardware hack that would require physical access to the computer for a considerable length of time, and involves exposing the Infineon chip to acid, then to rust remover and then tapping parts of the exposed chip core. Even if an attack could do all this on-site and without being detected, they would still somehow have to solder the eavesdropping chip, close everything up so as not to arouse suspicion, leave undetected and wait for the victim to use his computer.
The bottom line is this:
Is this attack possible? Yes.
Is this attack plausible? Remotely.
Is this attack realistic? Not really.
So your argument is that because (a) Judges and Justices are people and peope may err and (b) Scalia made a monumental blunder, somehow all decisions are equally flawed? I call bullshit.
You ask for proof, so I'll briefly point out United States v. Montoya De Hernandez, United States v. Flores-Montano, United States v. Ramsey and of course the relatively recent cases of United States v. Arnold and United States v. Ickes. The judicial predecent is pretty firmly established: the government has a legitimate interest in knowing who is coming into the country and what is being brought in. As a result, the government has singificant leeway (but not a carte blanche) to conduct searches at the border without running afoul of 4th Amendment. Feel free to ignore all this, but the Courts don't.
But... aren't the laptops already across the border when they are searched? The border is a very very thin line, so either these searches are being conducted in (say), Mexico without the Mexican Governments permission, or they are being conducted inside the US.
While the Court has not given the government a carte blanche, it has shown deference to the government and its legitimate interest in patrolling the border, by ruling, for example that the CBP can, without running afoul of the 4th Amendment, establish checkpoints on public highways in the vicinity of the Mexican border, even if those checkpoints are not at the actual border.
You are correct. The Courts have consistently held that there is a legitimate government interest in searching those who seek to enter the country and does not need a warrant to do so in most (although not all) cases. For example, in U.S. v. Ramsey (1977) the Supeme Court partially held that "[b]order searches without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless 'reasonable' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment" and that the "border search exception is not based on the doctrine of 'exigent circumstances,' but is a longstanding, historically recognized exception to the Fourth Amendment's general principle that a warrant be obtained." Other examples of this can be found in United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, U.S. v. Ickes and U.S. v. Arnold.
Except that's not reuse. An EIN is not a social security number. Repeat after me, an EIN is not a social security number!
Just because your telephone number is 666-555-1212 and my driver's license number is 666-55-1211 doesn't mean the DMV is reusing telephone numbers as driver's license numbers.
In this presentation we will discuss and demonstrate how to permanently re-flash Intel BIOSes on
the latest Intel® Q45-based desktop systems. In contrast to a previous work done by other
researches a few months earlier, who targeted unprotected low-end BIOSes, we focus on one of
the most secure, vPro-compatible, BIOSes, that normally only allow a vendor's digitally signed
firmware to be flashed. We demonstrate how to bypass this verification scheme, using a very
sophisticated heap overflow exploit. The attack requires administrator-level access, and also
requires one reboot to succeed, albeit doesn't require any user consent or cooperation, nor any
physical access to the machine â" thus it is well suited for use by malware.
The attack stresses the importance of other means for ensuring trusted boot process, like e.g.
TCG's TPM-aided ones, as well as the importance of better review of the core system software
and firmware.
Intel implements exactly the sort of switch you describe, in addition to requiring a signed BIOS. And lo, it's still possible to do bad things...
You really think that MS would be the one hurting if the EU prevented the sale of Microsoft software? How naive are you?
Such a ban would last all of 15 minutes before panicked EU politicos apologized profusely, lifted the ban and resigned.
You must be clairvoyant, since you know my background while at the same time knowing nothing about me and my qualifications. Are you Miss Cleo?
Humans are better creative thinkers than computers, but that's irrelevant. Especially when it comes to flying that is, by and large, a by-the-book operation. We don't put flight-control computers on planes to do creative thinking. We put them there because they perform a number of tasks faster and with more accuracy than a human pilot. Without computers, aircraft designers could not use relaxed static stability, since aircraft with negative static stability require hunderds of micro-corrections per second to stay aloft. Even more mundane but important in this "green" age: aircraft on autopilot spend considerably less fuel than aircraft actively flown by pilots for the same segments, which is why most commercial flights are now spend the majority of their time on autopilot.
Creative thinking is great, but it's not the end-all, be-all. As a matter of fact, commercial pilots aren't hired to be creative: they're hired because the public likes the warm fuzzy feeling they get from knowing a pilot is up there. With the exception of taxying on the ground, taking off, landing and responding to ATC, a pilot's job mostly consists of flipping a couple of switches for the autopilot.
Warm feelings aside, you would be well advised not to place your trust entirely on humans. A human may come up with innovative solutions in the rare emergency and may save the day. But he can also make monumentally stupid decisions. A computer on the other hand won't win any creativity awards, but it will do what it was programmed to do every time and it won't get complacent, arrogant or bored of performing the same task time and time again.
As I mentioned before, computers on Helios 522 repeatedly warned the pilots that the cabin pressurization settings were incorrect. The pilots proceeded to ignore those warnings -- I'm sure they were thinking creatively at the time. But if the non-creative computer had either addressed the issue automatically or refused to allow the plane to exceed the altitude that was safe given the current aircraft configuration chances are the people on Helios 522 would have landed safely and gone on to lead perfectly ordinary lives.
An Airbus is a flawed system created by flawed humans.
And what does this retarded tautology prove? That imperfect engineers designed imperfect planes flown by imperfect pilots? Humans are imperfect and therefore susceptible to making arithmetic mistakes too. But that doesn't mean that when your grade-school teacher teaches you that 2 + 2 is 4 next week, you can stand up and say: "Well, maybe it's not because you are imperfect and you could be making a mistake."
When an unexpected bug manifests itself you want the computational device with the most functional capabilities (that is, the human machine which is a superset of the Turing machine) in control.
As an engineer I know that bugs will manifest themselves -- whether that bug is a pilot having a stroke, a computer botching an FDIV, a ball bearing failing or whatever else. It will, eventually happen. I won't make blanket statements that a pilot is the device with the most functional capabilities. All I know is what I, as an engineer, can do. So at the design phase, I strive to ensure the highest possible degree of fault-tolerance that I can possibly work into the device, that I carefully work through everything to ensure that I haven't missed something. I'll oversee the implementation to ensure that my specs are followed. And then I will take a handful of finished devices are run them through torture tests. It's all this flawed human can do.
You blindly assert that the pilot is the one with the most functional capabilities. I call bullshit. Computers, in general, are much better at flying planes. Barring a malfunction (something that the pilot himself is susceptible too) they will always generate the same output given the same input; their actions are the result of the calculations of aeronautical engineers and the distilled experience of hundreds of thousands of flight hours by pilots all over the world; they will integrate many more variables than a human can possibly integrate and still their reaction time will considerably faster than even the fastest human pilot. Computers also help pilots by automatically compensating for damage (e.g. the loss of an aileron) leaving the pilot free to actually get the plane safely to the ground. In 2005 Airbus flight control computers compensated for significant damage to an aircraft, allowing the pilots enough control to safely land a plane without a rudder. I'm sure there are other cases I can't think of right this instant.
Consider the tragedy that was Helios Airways Flight 522. Our understanding of that accident is that the pilots became disabled after the cabin depressurized. They seemed to disregard warnings from onboard computers and failed to either recognize the effects of hypoxia and take steps to correct the problem. The computer was the more functional computational device in this case. Arguably, it should have detected the depressurization, issued automated warnings to ATC, and if unable to interact with the pilots, it should have reduced altitude, provided it was safe to do so.
As long as a pilot needs to be in the cockpit, a pilot needs to be able to shut the computer off.
The pilot and the computer work synergistically and with modern FBW planes there's no way to shut the computer off, but pilots already have override authority and are able to cause the airplane to exceed its performance envelope if necessary. The only difference is that Airbus flight control computers are more aggressive in what they will allow than their Boeing counterparts.
I have no problems with benchmarking the O/S and commenting on performance and the like, but when the person that analyzes and presents these results says: "the process lists are similar" I'm forced to wonder what the guy is smoking.
OK, so you have have smss.exe, csrss.exe, winlogon.exe, a bunch of svchost.exe processes. That really says nothing about the underlying architecture of the operating system and the amount of differences that are there. This guy might as well have said "I looked at Word '97 and Word 2007 and they're both named 'winword.exe' and let you edit text. I'm struck by those similarities!"
Anyone expecting Windows 7 to be a radical departure from Windows Vista is delusional, all the more so if that expectation involved vastly different process lists.
Also, this guy compares the video encoding performance of Vista and Windows 7 and says there's no performance improvements... That has got to the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Seriously.
It might very well be that Windows 7 is as slow as Vista. Maybe it's even slower. But you will never know that by comparing how long video encoding takes on each of them.
Video encoding is a CPU-bound process, so nothing Windows 7 does can improve the video encoding performance of any machine because it cannot just magically improve your CPUs clock speed. All other things being equal, any gains from encoding german scheisse porn on Windows 7 over doing so on Windows Vista are going to be negligible at best.
Pure linking does NOT produce a derivative work. In order to produce a work of any kind, for purposes of copyright, there must be creative expression involved. An automated process, like a linker, is not creative, and its output does not, in itself, qualify as a derived work. This is well settled law.
As for the nonsense that "B has to preexist for there to be a 'A linked to B'" that's... well... nonsense:
If B is a.so, then linking is involved everytime A runs. If I now write C, in such as way so as to fully emulate B's binary interface, I can have A link to C instead. Does A become a derivative work of C?
But even if B is a.a, there are still issues: If I can compile A because source is available, and I link it against C (remember, written after A), does A now become a derivative work of C?
You are correct about distribution, but my example was meant to demonstrate that even if you ignore the considerable legal precedent about mere aggregation and the output of non-creative processes not qualifying as a new work for copyright purposes, you still have one huge problem:
Namely, that if linking could create a work for the purposes of copyright you would invariably end up with situations that make no sense, such as program A, written in 2004, becoming a derivative of B, written in 2007, by linking. Just to clarify B did not exist when A was written, and therefore, code which A could not be a derivative of. Does that "compute?"
[...]it's a common interpretation of the GPL that if you link to a GPL-(no-linking-exception) library (like GNU readline or Qt) you are making a derivative work and thus, you have to license your work under the GPL.
It may be common, but that doesn't make it right. A good example of why linking does not necessarily imply derivation is this:
You develop a non-open-source program, and decide to dynamically link to "oolib.so" which is also non-open-source. I come along, and develop (under the GPL) "foolib.so" which happens to be compatible with "oolib.so". If I force your program to load "foolib.so" instead of "oolib.so" (and there are many ways) is it your position that your program has:
Become a derivative of a work that came _after it_ and it has no knowledge of
Your code has linked into GPL code and is now automatically GPL?
Similar arguments can be made for static linking and "oolib.a" and "foolib.a"
Also, keep in mind that it is settled law that only a creative process can create a work for copyright purposes. Linking is most definitely not a creative process. It is a purely automated and mechanical process, and so the act of linking cannot create any kind of work, derivative or otherwise.
I'm sorry, but variable valve actuation is not a major leap today. It was a major leap a decade or so ago.
Indeed, Renault had been actively researching electromagnetic valve actuation and infinitely variable lift and timing systems for their F1 engines since at least the mid 90's. I believe that at least some of their engines have used such electromagnetic actuators in the past, in combination with pneumatic springs (which are not really "springs" in the traditional sense, but function in a similar way) although I can't find a specific reference to that effect.
And then, of course, there is Valeo. You see, in 2005, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, it introduced a system that replaced camshafts with electromagnetically actuated valves and it claims that it will be available to manufacturers in volume in 2009. More details, including a pretty image, can be found here.
Now, coming up with smarter management software (which seems to be implied by the article), that can take advantage of per-cylinder (and per-valve) actuation by using such tricks as re-introduction of exhaust gases from previous cycles into the cylinder sounds very promising, and could help increase power, improve mileage, reduce emissions and lengthen the life of catalytic converters.
Since the medical costs for any individual are highly predictable, most health coverage is not "insurance" at all.
I don't know if I'd call "any individuals'" medical costs "highly predictable." There are models, to be sure, and some are pretty good. But not good enough to justify this statement. Take my father for instance. He was very athletic, in great shape, and ended up having to have 3 open heart surgeries. No health issues and no warning signs; it all started out as an infection, and within 2 weeks, we were in the waiting room.
The majority of people (ignoring for now the half of total healthcare costs that's shifted from taxpayers to retirees) are in group plans. These plans aren't insurance because the coverage intentionally ignores readily-available information about individuals in the group.
If you wish to draw that distinction (and it's valid) I will point out that I spoke specifically of insurance coverage, and not participation in a group plan. I don't have or want some half-baked group plan by a company that will fight me tooth and nail in my time of need and I don't want a government provided "one size fits all" plan that I will be forced to pay for at the point of the taxman's gun.
I choose to pay out of my own pocket for an insurance company that I trust will be there for me if and when I need it. It costs me a lot, but it's money well-spent. Your mileage may vary.
Why else would employers be involved in this sideline that's totally irrelevant to their core business?
Good question. Could it be because the politicos in Washington want to placate their unthinking "masters" by going back every few weeks and saying "We're making your employers spend money to insure you. We're holding those barons of industry accountable. The days of your exploitation are over mindless masses!" And nobody has the balls to stand up and say that and other moves by those idiots we elect to office have brought about the rise of the monster known as the HMO, and have turned a medical system that was the pride of the world into a money-guzzling beast that nobody can afford to feed.
So these private "insurance" companies already do insure almost anyone who walks in the office. There's just the catch that the system is rigged so that they have to be sponsored by an employer.
Again, I was referring to private insurance that an individual buys for himself, not a group plan. If you wish to discuss group plans, we can do that too.
So, your kind of society is one where a private insurance company must insure everyone who walks in the office, against their own judgment, because to do otherwise is discrimination? An insurance company is a business, like any other. And businesses that operate in the real world -- not in a world of gingerbread houses and lollipop lanes -- are out to make money, and they do so by making sound business decisions.
It's unlikely that hard drives that support only 512-byte sectors will become extinct tomorrow just because this standard was passed. It's unlikely that "HD512" will become extinct a year from now even. Just because something new comes along doesn't mean that the old instantly disappears.
Case in point, consider the 80386 CPU from way back in 1985, when plastic earrings the size of hubcaps were all the rage. You'd imagine it's dead, right? Well, you'd be wrong. A whole lot of 80386 CPUs are still doing a fine job, providing the processing power for aircrafts that fly hundreds of thousands of people per year. And not just the "turn coffeepot on" type of processing power either: we're talking avionics. At least one flight warning system in active use today is based on an 80386. Other systems probably use equally antiquated technology, and you don't see the manufacturers having trouble buying a chip that's over 20 years old!
Same thing with your 4MB device. "Short mode" hard drives will still be available for it for a while longer. At some point, when there's no longer sufficient market for such hard drives, they will, of course, become extinct of course. But at that point, it will not matter.
-n
Now when I want to update just 256 bytes, instead of reading 512 bytes, changing 256 of them, and writing 512 back, I now have to do this with 4096 bytes. So I end up transferring 3584 more bytes than I otherwise needed to.
So, your O/S requires that you issue all read and write operations using the hard drive's native block size? That must suck. What else must you do? Setup DMA manually in your app? Solder a microcontroller onto the board perhaps?
Sarcasm aside, you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this change achieves, who it will affect, and how. Other posters have addressed those very issues eloquently, so I won't go into that.
They really could do this transparently. Let the driver write anything in any range.
Sorry to burst your bubble but it already is done transparently. The O/S lets you write anything -- from a single byte, to gigabytes -- transparently; all you do is tell the O/S read n bytes of file F so and so into buffer at x, or write m bytes from buffer at y into file F, which is the interface that 99% of programmers use. And after what you wrote above, I find it hard to believe that you are writing the specialized software, low-level drivers and/or controller microcode that could potentially be affected by this change.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid you're wrong. Following your advice -- to turn "where you want to go" -- will likely end up with the car out of control and in a spin.
If you are on ice, rain or gravel with your car is sliding to the left and you turn the wheel "where you want to go" (which is, most likely, to the "right") you simply won't recover. By turning right as the car drifts left, you're not only going to cause the front wheels to eventually lock up, which is bad enough, but you will also end up spinning. Similarly, if you misjudged a turn and entered faster than you should and are now seeing your car understeer (as most modern, front-wheel drive vehicles will) turning the steering wheel "where you want to go" won't help you recover either.
Driver's ed courses are correct -- steer into the slide. And I'm not stating this information just by relying on "driver's ed courses." I've been racing since I was very young on most anything you can imagine -- from karts, to rally cars.
ksemlerK, clearly you don't even have a minute of winter driving or gravel experience. Frankly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone quite so misinformed about what to do. I hope that nobody heeds your advice and that I never run into you on on the road...
If your car is sliding on gravel, rain or ice you want to steer INTO the slide, not in the opposite direction. Te same applies if you misjudged a turn. If you end up going in a turn too fast and your car is understeering or oversteering. Simply reduce the turning angle on the steering wheel. This will effectively result in the increase of the turning radius.
Playing with the throttle in the middle of a turn when the car is sliding while cause dramatic weight shifts and result in behavior that you may not be expecting -- the car will likely oversteer and most drivers will NOT be able to recover.
The IOC (and various Country Olympic Committees) have been abusing this stuff for a while now. Take a look at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010007020_olympian06m.html for some more insanity. In Beijing they would cover brands up with tape. On faucets. On light switches. And just about everywhere else. Check it out here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080818/1248442014.shtml This is just complete insanity. I whole-heartedly that it might be high time we say to the IOC and the USOC to go fuck themselves, pull out of the revelant treaties and start a new high-profile sporting event.
Again, I'm not suggesting that this is right -- or even sane. But, the way that things are, it seems that the IOC is within its specially crafted legal rights to ask UVEX to not refer to the Athlete formerly known as Lindsay Kildow.
Did you even bother to read the article and understand how this works, or are you just spewing stuff out? It cannot be automated! This is a hardware hack that would require physical access to the computer for a considerable length of time, and involves exposing the Infineon chip to acid, then to rust remover and then tapping parts of the exposed chip core. Even if an attack could do all this on-site and without being detected, they would still somehow have to solder the eavesdropping chip, close everything up so as not to arouse suspicion, leave undetected and wait for the victim to use his computer. The bottom line is this: Is this attack possible? Yes. Is this attack plausible? Remotely. Is this attack realistic? Not really.
LOL! I'd mod you funny, but I'm out of points!
So your argument is that because (a) Judges and Justices are people and peope may err and (b) Scalia made a monumental blunder, somehow all decisions are equally flawed? I call bullshit.
You ask for proof, so I'll briefly point out United States v. Montoya De Hernandez , United States v. Flores-Montano , United States v. Ramsey and of course the relatively recent cases of United States v. Arnold and United States v. Ickes. The judicial predecent is pretty firmly established: the government has a legitimate interest in knowing who is coming into the country and what is being brought in. As a result, the government has singificant leeway (but not a carte blanche) to conduct searches at the border without running afoul of 4th Amendment. Feel free to ignore all this, but the Courts don't.
Moryath has already answered you in #29212217 and I will only add to that the following: This is what the Courts would call "sophistry" and similar cases hav been addressed before. See for example Almeida-Sanchez v. United States and United States v. Martinez-Fuerte .
While the Court has not given the government a carte blanche, it has shown deference to the government and its legitimate interest in patrolling the border, by ruling, for example that the CBP can, without running afoul of the 4th Amendment, establish checkpoints on public highways in the vicinity of the Mexican border, even if those checkpoints are not at the actual border.
You are correct. The Courts have consistently held that there is a legitimate government interest in searching those who seek to enter the country and does not need a warrant to do so in most (although not all) cases. For example, in U.S. v. Ramsey (1977) the Supeme Court partially held that "[b]order searches without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless 'reasonable' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment" and that the "border search exception is not based on the doctrine of 'exigent circumstances,' but is a longstanding, historically recognized exception to the Fourth Amendment's general principle that a warrant be obtained." Other examples of this can be found in United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, U.S. v. Ickes and U.S. v. Arnold.
Except that's not reuse. An EIN is not a social security number. Repeat after me, an EIN is not a social security number! Just because your telephone number is 666-555-1212 and my driver's license number is 666-55-1211 doesn't mean the DMV is reusing telephone numbers as driver's license numbers.
Intel implements exactly the sort of switch you describe, in addition to requiring a signed BIOS. And lo, it's still possible to do bad things...
You really think that MS would be the one hurting if the EU prevented the sale of Microsoft software? How naive are you? Such a ban would last all of 15 minutes before panicked EU politicos apologized profusely, lifted the ban and resigned.
You must be clairvoyant, since you know my background while at the same time knowing nothing about me and my qualifications. Are you Miss Cleo?
Humans are better creative thinkers than computers, but that's irrelevant. Especially when it comes to flying that is, by and large, a by-the-book operation. We don't put flight-control computers on planes to do creative thinking. We put them there because they perform a number of tasks faster and with more accuracy than a human pilot. Without computers, aircraft designers could not use relaxed static stability, since aircraft with negative static stability require hunderds of micro-corrections per second to stay aloft. Even more mundane but important in this "green" age: aircraft on autopilot spend considerably less fuel than aircraft actively flown by pilots for the same segments, which is why most commercial flights are now spend the majority of their time on autopilot.
Creative thinking is great, but it's not the end-all, be-all. As a matter of fact, commercial pilots aren't hired to be creative: they're hired because the public likes the warm fuzzy feeling they get from knowing a pilot is up there. With the exception of taxying on the ground, taking off, landing and responding to ATC, a pilot's job mostly consists of flipping a couple of switches for the autopilot.
Warm feelings aside, you would be well advised not to place your trust entirely on humans. A human may come up with innovative solutions in the rare emergency and may save the day. But he can also make monumentally stupid decisions. A computer on the other hand won't win any creativity awards, but it will do what it was programmed to do every time and it won't get complacent, arrogant or bored of performing the same task time and time again.
As I mentioned before, computers on Helios 522 repeatedly warned the pilots that the cabin pressurization settings were incorrect. The pilots proceeded to ignore those warnings -- I'm sure they were thinking creatively at the time. But if the non-creative computer had either addressed the issue automatically or refused to allow the plane to exceed the altitude that was safe given the current aircraft configuration chances are the people on Helios 522 would have landed safely and gone on to lead perfectly ordinary lives.
An Airbus is a flawed system created by flawed humans.
And what does this retarded tautology prove? That imperfect engineers designed imperfect planes flown by imperfect pilots? Humans are imperfect and therefore susceptible to making arithmetic mistakes too. But that doesn't mean that when your grade-school teacher teaches you that 2 + 2 is 4 next week, you can stand up and say: "Well, maybe it's not because you are imperfect and you could be making a mistake."
When an unexpected bug manifests itself you want the computational device with the most functional capabilities (that is, the human machine which is a superset of the Turing machine) in control.
As an engineer I know that bugs will manifest themselves -- whether that bug is a pilot having a stroke, a computer botching an FDIV, a ball bearing failing or whatever else. It will, eventually happen. I won't make blanket statements that a pilot is the device with the most functional capabilities. All I know is what I, as an engineer, can do. So at the design phase, I strive to ensure the highest possible degree of fault-tolerance that I can possibly work into the device, that I carefully work through everything to ensure that I haven't missed something. I'll oversee the implementation to ensure that my specs are followed. And then I will take a handful of finished devices are run them through torture tests. It's all this flawed human can do.
You blindly assert that the pilot is the one with the most functional capabilities. I call bullshit. Computers, in general, are much better at flying planes. Barring a malfunction (something that the pilot himself is susceptible too) they will always generate the same output given the same input; their actions are the result of the calculations of aeronautical engineers and the distilled experience of hundreds of thousands of flight hours by pilots all over the world; they will integrate many more variables than a human can possibly integrate and still their reaction time will considerably faster than even the fastest human pilot. Computers also help pilots by automatically compensating for damage (e.g. the loss of an aileron) leaving the pilot free to actually get the plane safely to the ground. In 2005 Airbus flight control computers compensated for significant damage to an aircraft, allowing the pilots enough control to safely land a plane without a rudder. I'm sure there are other cases I can't think of right this instant.
Consider the tragedy that was Helios Airways Flight 522. Our understanding of that accident is that the pilots became disabled after the cabin depressurized. They seemed to disregard warnings from onboard computers and failed to either recognize the effects of hypoxia and take steps to correct the problem. The computer was the more functional computational device in this case. Arguably, it should have detected the depressurization, issued automated warnings to ATC, and if unable to interact with the pilots, it should have reduced altitude, provided it was safe to do so.
As long as a pilot needs to be in the cockpit, a pilot needs to be able to shut the computer off.
The pilot and the computer work synergistically and with modern FBW planes there's no way to shut the computer off, but pilots already have override authority and are able to cause the airplane to exceed its performance envelope if necessary. The only difference is that Airbus flight control computers are more aggressive in what they will allow than their Boeing counterparts.
I have no problems with benchmarking the O/S and commenting on performance and the like, but when the person that analyzes and presents these results says: "the process lists are similar" I'm forced to wonder what the guy is smoking. OK, so you have have smss.exe, csrss.exe, winlogon.exe, a bunch of svchost.exe processes. That really says nothing about the underlying architecture of the operating system and the amount of differences that are there. This guy might as well have said "I looked at Word '97 and Word 2007 and they're both named 'winword.exe' and let you edit text. I'm struck by those similarities!" Anyone expecting Windows 7 to be a radical departure from Windows Vista is delusional, all the more so if that expectation involved vastly different process lists. Also, this guy compares the video encoding performance of Vista and Windows 7 and says there's no performance improvements... That has got to the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Seriously. It might very well be that Windows 7 is as slow as Vista. Maybe it's even slower. But you will never know that by comparing how long video encoding takes on each of them. Video encoding is a CPU-bound process, so nothing Windows 7 does can improve the video encoding performance of any machine because it cannot just magically improve your CPUs clock speed. All other things being equal, any gains from encoding german scheisse porn on Windows 7 over doing so on Windows Vista are going to be negligible at best.
As for the nonsense that "B has to preexist for there to be a 'A linked to B'" that's... well... nonsense:
If B is a .so, then linking is involved everytime A runs. If I now write C, in such as way so as to fully emulate B's binary interface, I can have A link to C instead. Does A become a derivative work of C?
But even if B is a .a, there are still issues: If I can compile A because source is available, and I link it against C (remember, written after A), does A now become a derivative work of C?
Namely, that if linking could create a work for the purposes of copyright you would invariably end up with situations that make no sense, such as program A, written in 2004, becoming a derivative of B, written in 2007, by linking. Just to clarify B did not exist when A was written, and therefore, code which A could not be a derivative of. Does that "compute?"
You develop a non-open-source program, and decide to dynamically link to "oolib.so" which is also non-open-source. I come along, and develop (under the GPL) "foolib.so" which happens to be compatible with "oolib.so". If I force your program to load "foolib.so" instead of "oolib.so" (and there are many ways) is it your position that your program has:
- Become a derivative of a work that came _after it_ and it has no knowledge of
- Your code has linked into GPL code and is now automatically GPL?
Similar arguments can be made for static linking and "oolib.a" and "foolib.a" Also, keep in mind that it is settled law that only a creative process can create a work for copyright purposes. Linking is most definitely not a creative process. It is a purely automated and mechanical process, and so the act of linking cannot create any kind of work, derivative or otherwise.Indeed, Renault had been actively researching electromagnetic valve actuation and infinitely variable lift and timing systems for their F1 engines since at least the mid 90's. I believe that at least some of their engines have used such electromagnetic actuators in the past, in combination with pneumatic springs (which are not really "springs" in the traditional sense, but function in a similar way) although I can't find a specific reference to that effect.
And then, of course, there is Valeo. You see, in 2005, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, it introduced a system that replaced camshafts with electromagnetically actuated valves and it claims that it will be available to manufacturers in volume in 2009. More details, including a pretty image, can be found here.
Now, coming up with smarter management software (which seems to be implied by the article), that can take advantage of per-cylinder (and per-valve) actuation by using such tricks as re-introduction of exhaust gases from previous cycles into the cylinder sounds very promising, and could help increase power, improve mileage, reduce emissions and lengthen the life of catalytic converters.
I don't know if I'd call "any individuals'" medical costs "highly predictable." There are models, to be sure, and some are pretty good. But not good enough to justify this statement. Take my father for instance. He was very athletic, in great shape, and ended up having to have 3 open heart surgeries. No health issues and no warning signs; it all started out as an infection, and within 2 weeks, we were in the waiting room.
If you wish to draw that distinction (and it's valid) I will point out that I spoke specifically of insurance coverage, and not participation in a group plan. I don't have or want some half-baked group plan by a company that will fight me tooth and nail in my time of need and I don't want a government provided "one size fits all" plan that I will be forced to pay for at the point of the taxman's gun.
I choose to pay out of my own pocket for an insurance company that I trust will be there for me if and when I need it. It costs me a lot, but it's money well-spent. Your mileage may vary.
Good question. Could it be because the politicos in Washington want to placate their unthinking "masters" by going back every few weeks and saying "We're making your employers spend money to insure you. We're holding those barons of industry accountable. The days of your exploitation are over mindless masses!" And nobody has the balls to stand up and say that and other moves by those idiots we elect to office have brought about the rise of the monster known as the HMO, and have turned a medical system that was the pride of the world into a money-guzzling beast that nobody can afford to feed. Again, I was referring to private insurance that an individual buys for himself, not a group plan. If you wish to discuss group plans, we can do that too.So, your kind of society is one where a private insurance company must insure everyone who walks in the office, against their own judgment, because to do otherwise is discrimination? An insurance company is a business, like any other. And businesses that operate in the real world -- not in a world of gingerbread houses and lollipop lanes -- are out to make money, and they do so by making sound business decisions.
It's unlikely that hard drives that support only 512-byte sectors will become extinct tomorrow just because this standard was passed. It's unlikely that "HD512" will become extinct a year from now even. Just because something new comes along doesn't mean that the old instantly disappears. Case in point, consider the 80386 CPU from way back in 1985, when plastic earrings the size of hubcaps were all the rage. You'd imagine it's dead, right? Well, you'd be wrong. A whole lot of 80386 CPUs are still doing a fine job, providing the processing power for aircrafts that fly hundreds of thousands of people per year. And not just the "turn coffeepot on" type of processing power either: we're talking avionics. At least one flight warning system in active use today is based on an 80386. Other systems probably use equally antiquated technology, and you don't see the manufacturers having trouble buying a chip that's over 20 years old! Same thing with your 4MB device. "Short mode" hard drives will still be available for it for a while longer. At some point, when there's no longer sufficient market for such hard drives, they will, of course, become extinct of course. But at that point, it will not matter. -n
You work for an ISP and you think a T1 and a DSL line are the same thing? I imagine your job title at that ISP is "janitor."