Hate to say it, but attitude counts for a lot. I sympathise with everything you said, but what I DO about it is different. I explain to people, patiently, NOT condescendingly, how technology works. I defend logic, casuality, and self-critisicm as being vital to our existence and experience of the universe, and that brains are fun, and that it is worth understanding the world, and worth doing something to change it. In being a living example of how a geeky person can have fun, enjoy life, and make things better, I like to belive I inspire others to do the same.
At the end of a bad day, do I feel the same cynicsm you display? Sure. But the only thing cynics ever accomplish is to make themselves miserable. So I never let myself give into it , or indulge in self-pity for any length of time.
I hope you were just having a bad day when you wrote this.
The problem that the grandparent pointed out is very real. While we need to assume that "the state of current knowledge" is sound and trustworthy to do any engineering it is fatal to make that assumption in science.
I had a friend who made a minor discovery while in undergrad, simply because he didn't fudge his data in a lab assignment. He got graded down for it, and decided to redo the experiment. When he got the same results, he started asking around and found out that quite a few of his classmates had also gotten the results he had, but written it off to "experimental error" since it didn't match the predicted outcome. He took this back to the professor, and challenged him to actually do the assignment himself. They wound up publishing a joint paper on it, but to me the most interesting realization was that, for all the years that assignment had been given, nobody else had caught the error in the accepted theory.
By all means, if you have to bet on the outcome of any particular situation, go with the current state of knowledge. But if you're asked if our current knowledge is correct in its entirety, bet heavily that it is not. And if observation doesn't match the theory, don't lock yourself into the assumption that the data must be wrong because the theory couldn't possible be.
I think that your usage of the phrase, 'correct in its entirety', though, guarantees the outcome of the argument you are looking for. Of course it's impossible to be 'correct in its entirety' - experimental error, limitations in resolution, and even quantum randomness means that you can not make a perfectly true statement. But just because that is the case does NOT mean knowledge is not advancing and approaching the Truth.
For example (and I freely admit I lift this example from Issac Asimov), the flat earth theory. We poo-poo it, laugh at it, wonder about the silly primitive people who beilived it.... but it is not a bad theory. Put it this way. The flat earth theory posits that the earth has a curvature of 0 inches per mile lateral. The reality is that the earth curves 8 inches per mile lateral. An error of 8 inches per mile in your theory is not too bad, really, and until a large number of humans were regularly travelling far enough where those 8 inches per mile began to add up and make the maps and timekeeping go funny, it would have gone unnoticed.
Okay, now you figured out the earth is a sphere. Great! Except here comes Newton, with his F=ma and F=Gm1m2/r^2 stuff... and he predicts that the earth is NOT sperical... it's really an oblate spheroid, due to it's rotation, and so the curvature is not 8 inches per mile ALWAYS (as it would be on a true sphere), but varies from 7.998 to 8.002 inches per mile depending whether you are going around the equator or the poles when measuring.... Does this make the spherical earth theory silly, outmoded, wrong? Of course not. It merely points out that it can be REFINED.
So, I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. The state of current knowledge has soundness and trustworthiness in science, as well as enigneering. After all, it has to fit with all the current observations or it would not be considered an adequate, sound, trustworthy theory of nature! You can always say, "well, you haven't done every possible experiment" - this is trivially true - and what allows science to be USEFUL is that it makes predictions of what will happen BEYOND just regurgiating the results of experiments - but of course, since these predicitions have not, a priori, been tested, we really don't know what will happen until we try, as your friend discovered! The price of making science useful is eternal uncertainty as to what happens when you "stretch" it a bit. I suspect I am agreeing with you more than disagreeing, but I felt the point was important to make.
Why don't we ban DINOSAURS from holding elected office? That would solve a lot of problems.
Sheesh - I know a lot of old folks who have a lot of wisdom about the human condition, but it seems like none of them penetrate DC unscathed. It's just the lopsidedness of the vote (400+ !?!?) for this stupid law that im/de-presses me.
There is a floor on how young you can be to be a congressman or senator (30, I think?) - perhaps we need a cap as well. Solve term limits indirectly as well.
It shouldn't be too hard to set up some fixed IP addresses for your home machines, and let "guests" use a different IP range, for which you have implemented port blocking for all but 80, 25 and a few others for https and sending email, if you wish.
Thanks very much for the links - somehow, it's one of those topics I was never that interested in earlier in life, but more and more haunts me now. It IS scary that there is a need to think about it. I would like to think that we learn from generation to generation, but it doesn't always seem to be the case - my father made it over here with a trunk of clothes and a few odds and ends in that trunk (it lived in our basement, sitting in a corner. He left most of the other stuff in there); perhaps "learning" in my case would be to establish a few foreign bank accounts just in case - so I don't have to start quite from 0 if I have to leave. One of the "tricks" the Nazis used in '38 in order to make sure that they could kill as many Jews as possible when the time came, was to make it widely known that you would lose EVERYTHING you owned if you immigrated overseas. So a lot of people who could have fled, with nothing but their lives, didn't... and then they lost everything anyway, and their lives.
Actually, he managed to raise me with a pretty cheerful tone toward life - the fact I am only getting interested in this stuff now, almost 20 years after he died, is a testament to that (not to mention a sign of the times). But he did have one overriding bias - he refused to set foot in Europe again as long as he lived. When I asked him about that, he had two responses. One was that the Holocaust happened not just because of the Nazis, but because ordinary citizens turned in their neighbors and allowed it to happen, and he couldn't forgive that. The other reason was that the level of hate that floated around in SE Europe, was tremendous. From Hungarian village to Slav village to Romanian village to Serb village, the dislike was palpable. He predicted that when the U.S.S.R. fell (he was sure it would fall apart one day), SE Europe would again be at war - he didn't live to see it, but what happened to Yugoslavia fit the bill pretty well. In America, the level of hatred was so much less than Europe, it was perpetually like a fresh breeze from the trees, as he put it. I wonder what is causing that to change....
Thanks again for the links, Knuckles and einhverfr, and good luck out there....
My parents fled horrifying regimes elsewhere in the world; I never imagined I might have to do it here, as well.
My ancestors two fled oppressive regimes elsewhere in the world (Ireland under English occupation, Soviet Union, France during the reformation, and more). Indeed my ancestors seemed to have a gift for getting into trouble with such authorities and getting out alive.
It's interesting that people who have had family members have to flee for their lives from country to country are the ones who are more in tune with what direction a country is going in vs. where it presently is. My father escaped from Nazi Germany at the age of 33. With the exeception of his mother and brother, the rest of his family did not. Sadly, he died when I was still a teenager - being older now, and having some wisdom, I want to ask him: "How did you know?" - after all, Germany was the country of culture, Mozart, science, civilization. Most Jews just thought Hitler was one more anti-semite who would huff and puff, pass a few unpleasant laws, and eventually pass from the scene. That is why so many stayed - not to mention, you have to be pretty convinced to give up almost everything - your home, your culture, your language, your career... but my father knew, somehow. Hence, I am here.
So, Whitewolf and einhvefr, forgive my curiosity - I can not ask my father, so I ask you - have you asked your parents that question? What was their answer? I would really like to know.
...that is, you must first pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so that one of his Noodly Appendages whips through the ether and ** pop ** goes your fusion bubble! Without that, the repeat experiments are doomed to failure....
On a more serious note, this is more about psychology than physics. The ability of man to fool himself is unmatched.
We've had supernovas recorded throughout human history; Wikipedia lists ones occuring in our galaxy (meaning, close enough to be easily observable) in 1006, 1054, 1181, 1572, 1604, and I remember from other sources that several were observed during Roman times. It seems that we've been "unlucky" in that ever since we've started to have precision astronomical instruments, we haven't had one go off in our galaxy. It would be really interesting if we would finally get one in modern times - and since they seem to go off about every 200 years or so, it doesn't seem that unlikely we might get one in our lifetimes. So here's to a little optimism!
Thanks for posting your insights and experiences about it - it's nice to see there are other "self-taught" devs out there who are doing something useful.
1. Airplanes require oxygen above 13,000 feet MSL, not 18,000 feet MSL. You're confusing the upper limit of oxygen-less flying with the base of class A (IFR-only) airspace.
2. Most small-to-medium sized pressurized passenger planes do not pressurize the cargo hold. Larger planes do sometimes have a separate, pressurized hold for transporting pets and other pressure-sensitive cargo.
This is not quite correct - you are thinking of Part 91 ops, and the section you are grasping for is the following:
91.211 Supplemental oxygen.
(a) General. No person may operate a civil aircraft of U.S. registry--
(1) At cabin pressure altitudes above 12,500 feet (MSL) up to and including 14,000 feet (MSL) unless the required minimum flight crew is provided with and uses supplemental oxygen for that part of the flight at those altitudes that is of more than 30 minutes duration;
(2) At cabin pressure altitudes above 14,000 feet (MSL) unless the required minimum flight crew is provided with and uses supplemental oxygen during the entire flight time at those altitudes; and
(3) At cabin pressure altitudes above 15,000 feet (MSL) unless each occupant of the aircraft is provided with supplemental oxygen.
Air carrier ops have stricter requirements, generally kicking in around 10,000 feet pressure altitude - see FAR 121.329 if you are interested.
As for pressurized A/C, I'm not sure what your idea of "small-to-medium sized pressurized passenger planes" is, but it is probably worth noting that just about every western airliner in existence B737-500 sized and higher has a pressure vessel that encloses the cargo compartments. Mind you, these compartments are frequently not HEATED - this is what tends to take out Fluffy.
This is NOT true. ALL areas of an aircraft are pressurised.The floor of a plane is not sealed, as if it were (a large, flat surface) it would EXPLODE! Lower holds are used to carry pets and such - I don't think they would live at FL 300. The only parts of an aircrafts airframe that isn't pressurised are the wheel wells and the condensor side of the air-conditioning units. The wings aren't pressurised by cabin pressure (but they are pressurised by pumps to get the fuel out.
Be careful with the word "all". Most jets typically have a pressure vessel that is not the entire interior of the aircraft; for instance, every jet I know of, the APU is outside the pressure vessel. In particular, in the EMB-145, not only is the APU not in the pressure vessel, the entire cargo compartment is NOT pressurized! The main outflow valves from the cabin dump into it. This is a relatively small A/C, so its cargo compartment is not under the pax compartment - it is the entire cross-section of the fuselage at the aftmost stations, so structurally the engineers felt it was easier to cap the pressurised section before the fuselage began to narrow near the tail.
They would notice because the automated fire / smoke detection systems would notify them.
Or because the flames melted those nice, black 80% polyester pants most airline pilots wear....;)
Actually, on most modern airliners, there are only smoke detectors in "inaccessable" areas, such as the cargo compartments, avionics racks, engines, etc. Generally, the one place in the passenger cabin that has smoke detectors is the lav - guess why?
If this group was in charge of the appolo missions we'd still be doing near earth orbital testing.
Space is dangerous, expensive, and offers very few good opportunities. If you want to get anywhere you have to take risks. I'm not saying that people should just throw their lives away for nothing, but every trip they make into space breaks new ground and teaches them new lessons. If you want the rewards you have to be prepared to walk away with a bloddy nose now and again, especially in a game like this.
It may be harsh, but I would say that if they are trying to make space travel 100% safe, it's just plain never going to happen. Right now I think we should be happy with 90%. From a purely practical perspective, if a dozen people lose their lives to accellerate the space program 10 years, I would call that a good trade. And I'd be happy to be one of those 12.
Yeah, we've learned a whole lot. We learned from the Challenger disaster that rubber gets inelastic in the cold.... oh wait - we've known that for over 100+ years. We've learned from the Columbia disaster that chunks of low density materal can damage stuff at high speeds. I think that's been known somewhere around when we figured KE = 1/2*m*v^2.
I know you are trying to make a reasonable point about having to take risks to achieve goals in space, but the pieces of the shuttle that were considered most susceptible to failure - the main engines fuel pumps, the main engine exhaust guides, and a few hundred other "critical" (meaning no backup system - system fails, hull loss occurs), are NOT the ones that have brought down the shuttles - stupid, wishful thinking about simple risk assessment did. Read the detailed write-up on the Challenger by Feynman, right from NASA's own website: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/ docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txtThings that could be FIXED, if we actually put a fraction of the dollars (real dollars, not nominal ones) that we put into the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, along with some engineering sense. We are doing space on the cheap, and ignoring ways of improving it. If we were finding new and useful information about the dangers and engineering necessary to enter space, great. But we are not - we are "discovering" that foam at the speed of sound can hurt things, that rubber is brittle in the cold, and that a launch date is more important than fixing a problem. That, to me, is not balls, but whistling in the dark and hoping you don't get snake-eyes this time round.
Completely depends on your metric. Fatality per mile, the shuttle is no doubt kicking cars' ass.
Yes, but after the first mile in the Shuttle, you're committed to another 1,000,000 miles or so. No pulling over to the side of the road and bailing early. I'll take the car.
While I am not defending Vista I would like to think that MS has enough forethought to submit their new OS to attacks of various natures. I doubt any large software house lets a product go to market without submitting it to the rough and tumbles of a simulated user environment.
I'm sure you are right. And if they were to say, "We have subjected Vista to more security checks and tests than any previous OS", I would probably accept that as fact. They do list many features that MIGHT enhance security. But all the security testing in the world does NOT demonstrate that a system is secure, because the system has to live in the real world, not the testing facility. And a wise company would know that, and rather than brag about something which is yet to be proven, might demonstrate that they understand that security is not a finish you apply like a coat of paint, but an enduring process (with apologies to Bruce Schneier) that they are committed to, rather than, "Here's the most secure OS in the world! Done! Finished! Buy it, and you will be secure!"
Anyone can design a system that they themselves can not crack. It's the other cracks they haven't thought of that count, and it remains to be seen how many there are.
I should mention that I agree that Joe Sixpack is the main threat to security - but allowing for this should be part of the design. Watching the multiplying security windows popping up confirming every little change to the files, even the aliases on a Vista desktop, makes me think that making USABLE security is still a New Thing at Microsoft.
You can't possibly know how secure an OS is until it's deployed in the wild, statistics are garnered, attacks are noted, etc., etc. To preemptively announce that "Vista [is] the most secure OS in the industry" before it is even released makes me think Microsoft is still high on itself.
Maybe it's just marketspeak, or maybe it's more of the same arrogance that they know better what is secure than reality does. I'll sit back and wait for a few years, thanks.
Either they (Ballmer and the Microsoft engineers) are really, really dumb/inexperienced, because it's pretty much impossible to remove all the spyware that accumulates on a Windows system, other than with a wipe, restore image/reload OS, apps, data from backups - or they are pathetically trying to show their sympathy for people who deal with Windows machines and all the crap that accumulates on them.
Hmmm, clueless execs & engineers or a OS that is impossible to maintain. I don't think either scenario makes me want to be their customer again.
Encryption is certainly available for your Mac, with one click of a checkbox in the Security Pref Pane. Or are you just saying FileVault is too unstable, or do you want more than the/Users directories encrypted?
In addition, you can create sparse encrypted disk images in OS X using Disk Utility, so while I don't believe you can encrypt your ENTIRE disk, you certainly can encrypt the parts that matter, I think.
I remember fooling around with encrypted partitions at some point, and I remember having a Windows glitch cause all my data to be lost - unlike when a few bad sectors could be manually worked around with various disk tools, if an encrypted file is "damaged", the whole thing is smoke - or at least it was back in 1998.
So, I think just the paranoia of having files being much more "destructible" has kept me from encrypting my hard drive on my laptop.
On the other hand, now I use OS X and Linux, and have multiple backups in multiple locations, so there is really no good reason why I don't use FileVault. Maybe I will..... but old habits born of bad experiences die hard.
For those too lazy to RTFA, just go for the pictures. The robot gets down on its knees, and pours the beer BACKWARDS over its head into the mug. It just looks... wrong. But very funny. I'd love to see pictures of the robot doing that in a bar somewhere.....
Re:These kinds of discussions make me sick.
on
On Point On Slacking
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Where are those moderator points when I need them? Very well put - and I hope you find a way to get more time outside. Cheers.
"The cave, which Hebrew University Professor Amos Frumkin said is 'unique in the world,' had been sealed off from the outside world since its surface is situated under a layer of chalk that is impenetrable to water."
Sealed off from the outside world, probably dark and dirty in that cave, with mysterious life forms growing within. Sounds like a typical/.ers house to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Still a year too late, sadly. But better late than never.
Man, you must get invited to parties a lot.
Hate to say it, but attitude counts for a lot. I sympathise with everything you said, but what I DO about it is different. I explain to people, patiently, NOT condescendingly, how technology works. I defend logic, casuality, and self-critisicm as being vital to our existence and experience of the universe, and that brains are fun, and that it is worth understanding the world, and worth doing something to change it. In being a living example of how a geeky person can have fun, enjoy life, and make things better, I like to belive I inspire others to do the same.
At the end of a bad day, do I feel the same cynicsm you display? Sure. But the only thing cynics ever accomplish is to make themselves miserable. So I never let myself give into it , or indulge in self-pity for any length of time.
I hope you were just having a bad day when you wrote this.
I had a friend who made a minor discovery while in undergrad, simply because he didn't fudge his data in a lab assignment. He got graded down for it, and decided to redo the experiment. When he got the same results, he started asking around and found out that quite a few of his classmates had also gotten the results he had, but written it off to "experimental error" since it didn't match the predicted outcome. He took this back to the professor, and challenged him to actually do the assignment himself. They wound up publishing a joint paper on it, but to me the most interesting realization was that, for all the years that assignment had been given, nobody else had caught the error in the accepted theory.
By all means, if you have to bet on the outcome of any particular situation, go with the current state of knowledge. But if you're asked if our current knowledge is correct in its entirety, bet heavily that it is not. And if observation doesn't match the theory, don't lock yourself into the assumption that the data must be wrong because the theory couldn't possible be.
I think that your usage of the phrase, 'correct in its entirety', though, guarantees the outcome of the argument you are looking for. Of course it's impossible to be 'correct in its entirety' - experimental error, limitations in resolution, and even quantum randomness means that you can not make a perfectly true statement. But just because that is the case does NOT mean knowledge is not advancing and approaching the Truth.
For example (and I freely admit I lift this example from Issac Asimov), the flat earth theory. We poo-poo it, laugh at it, wonder about the silly primitive people who beilived it.... but it is not a bad theory. Put it this way. The flat earth theory posits that the earth has a curvature of 0 inches per mile lateral. The reality is that the earth curves 8 inches per mile lateral. An error of 8 inches per mile in your theory is not too bad, really, and until a large number of humans were regularly travelling far enough where those 8 inches per mile began to add up and make the maps and timekeeping go funny, it would have gone unnoticed.
Okay, now you figured out the earth is a sphere. Great! Except here comes Newton, with his F=ma and F=Gm1m2/r^2 stuff... and he predicts that the earth is NOT sperical... it's really an oblate spheroid, due to it's rotation, and so the curvature is not 8 inches per mile ALWAYS (as it would be on a true sphere), but varies from 7.998 to 8.002 inches per mile depending whether you are going around the equator or the poles when measuring.... Does this make the spherical earth theory silly, outmoded, wrong? Of course not. It merely points out that it can be REFINED.
So, I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. The state of current knowledge has soundness and trustworthiness in science, as well as enigneering. After all, it has to fit with all the current observations or it would not be considered an adequate, sound, trustworthy theory of nature! You can always say, "well, you haven't done every possible experiment" - this is trivially true - and what allows science to be USEFUL is that it makes predictions of what will happen BEYOND just regurgiating the results of experiments - but of course, since these predicitions have not, a priori, been tested, we really don't know what will happen until we try, as your friend discovered! The price of making science useful is eternal uncertainty as to what happens when you "stretch" it a bit. I suspect I am agreeing with you more than disagreeing, but I felt the point was important to make.
Why don't we ban DINOSAURS from holding elected office? That would solve a lot of problems.
Sheesh - I know a lot of old folks who have a lot of wisdom about the human condition, but it seems like none of them penetrate DC unscathed. It's just the lopsidedness of the vote (400+ !?!?) for this stupid law that im/de-presses me.
There is a floor on how young you can be to be a congressman or senator (30, I think?) - perhaps we need a cap as well. Solve term limits indirectly as well.
It shouldn't be too hard to set up some fixed IP addresses for your home machines, and let "guests" use a different IP range, for which you have implemented port blocking for all but 80, 25 and a few others for https and sending email, if you wish.
Actually, he managed to raise me with a pretty cheerful tone toward life - the fact I am only getting interested in this stuff now, almost 20 years after he died, is a testament to that (not to mention a sign of the times). But he did have one overriding bias - he refused to set foot in Europe again as long as he lived. When I asked him about that, he had two responses. One was that the Holocaust happened not just because of the Nazis, but because ordinary citizens turned in their neighbors and allowed it to happen, and he couldn't forgive that. The other reason was that the level of hate that floated around in SE Europe, was tremendous. From Hungarian village to Slav village to Romanian village to Serb village, the dislike was palpable. He predicted that when the U.S.S.R. fell (he was sure it would fall apart one day), SE Europe would again be at war - he didn't live to see it, but what happened to Yugoslavia fit the bill pretty well. In America, the level of hatred was so much less than Europe, it was perpetually like a fresh breeze from the trees, as he put it. I wonder what is causing that to change....
Thanks again for the links, Knuckles and einhverfr, and good luck out there....
My ancestors two fled oppressive regimes elsewhere in the world (Ireland under English occupation, Soviet Union, France during the reformation, and more). Indeed my ancestors seemed to have a gift for getting into trouble with such authorities and getting out alive.
It's interesting that people who have had family members have to flee for their lives from country to country are the ones who are more in tune with what direction a country is going in vs. where it presently is. My father escaped from Nazi Germany at the age of 33. With the exeception of his mother and brother, the rest of his family did not. Sadly, he died when I was still a teenager - being older now, and having some wisdom, I want to ask him: "How did you know?" - after all, Germany was the country of culture, Mozart, science, civilization. Most Jews just thought Hitler was one more anti-semite who would huff and puff, pass a few unpleasant laws, and eventually pass from the scene. That is why so many stayed - not to mention, you have to be pretty convinced to give up almost everything - your home, your culture, your language, your career... but my father knew, somehow. Hence, I am here.
So, Whitewolf and einhvefr, forgive my curiosity - I can not ask my father, so I ask you - have you asked your parents that question? What was their answer? I would really like to know.
...that is, you must first pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so that one of his Noodly Appendages whips through the ether and ** pop ** goes your fusion bubble! Without that, the repeat experiments are doomed to failure....
On a more serious note, this is more about psychology than physics. The ability of man to fool himself is unmatched.
We've had supernovas recorded throughout human history; Wikipedia lists ones occuring in our galaxy (meaning, close enough to be easily observable) in 1006, 1054, 1181, 1572, 1604, and I remember from other sources that several were observed during Roman times. It seems that we've been "unlucky" in that ever since we've started to have precision astronomical instruments, we haven't had one go off in our galaxy. It would be really interesting if we would finally get one in modern times - and since they seem to go off about every 200 years or so, it doesn't seem that unlikely we might get one in our lifetimes. So here's to a little optimism!
Thanks for posting your insights and experiences about it - it's nice to see there are other "self-taught" devs out there who are doing something useful.
Oops, and I mistakenly assumed you were refering to US regs - thanks for the link for when I go north of the border...
2. Most small-to-medium sized pressurized passenger planes do not pressurize the cargo hold. Larger planes do sometimes have a separate, pressurized hold for transporting pets and other pressure-sensitive cargo.
This is not quite correct - you are thinking of Part 91 ops, and the section you are grasping for is the following:
91.211 Supplemental oxygen.
(a) General. No person may operate a civil aircraft of U.S. registry--
(1) At cabin pressure altitudes above 12,500 feet (MSL) up to and including 14,000 feet (MSL) unless the required minimum flight crew is provided with and uses supplemental oxygen for that part of the flight at those altitudes that is of more than 30 minutes duration;
(2) At cabin pressure altitudes above 14,000 feet (MSL) unless the required minimum flight crew is provided with and uses supplemental oxygen during the entire flight time at those altitudes; and
(3) At cabin pressure altitudes above 15,000 feet (MSL) unless each occupant of the aircraft is provided with supplemental oxygen.
Air carrier ops have stricter requirements, generally kicking in around 10,000 feet pressure altitude - see FAR 121.329 if you are interested.
As for pressurized A/C, I'm not sure what your idea of "small-to-medium sized pressurized passenger planes" is, but it is probably worth noting that just about every western airliner in existence B737-500 sized and higher has a pressure vessel that encloses the cargo compartments. Mind you, these compartments are frequently not HEATED - this is what tends to take out Fluffy.
Be careful with the word "all". Most jets typically have a pressure vessel that is not the entire interior of the aircraft; for instance, every jet I know of, the APU is outside the pressure vessel. In particular, in the EMB-145, not only is the APU not in the pressure vessel, the entire cargo compartment is NOT pressurized! The main outflow valves from the cabin dump into it. This is a relatively small A/C, so its cargo compartment is not under the pax compartment - it is the entire cross-section of the fuselage at the aftmost stations, so structurally the engineers felt it was easier to cap the pressurised section before the fuselage began to narrow near the tail.
As to collapsing floors due to depressurization, that is exactly what took out a DC-10 many years ago: http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cg i?date=03031974®=TC-JAV&airline=Turkish+Airline s
Or because the flames melted those nice, black 80% polyester pants most airline pilots wear.... ;)
Actually, on most modern airliners, there are only smoke detectors in "inaccessable" areas, such as the cargo compartments, avionics racks, engines, etc. Generally, the one place in the passenger cabin that has smoke detectors is the lav - guess why?
Yeah, we've learned a whole lot. We learned from the Challenger disaster that rubber gets inelastic in the cold.... oh wait - we've known that for over 100+ years. We've learned from the Columbia disaster that chunks of low density materal can damage stuff at high speeds. I think that's been known somewhere around when we figured KE = 1/2*m*v^2.
I know you are trying to make a reasonable point about having to take risks to achieve goals in space, but the pieces of the shuttle that were considered most susceptible to failure - the main engines fuel pumps, the main engine exhaust guides, and a few hundred other "critical" (meaning no backup system - system fails, hull loss occurs), are NOT the ones that have brought down the shuttles - stupid, wishful thinking about simple risk assessment did. Read the detailed write-up on the Challenger by Feynman, right from NASA's own website: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/ docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txtThings that could be FIXED, if we actually put a fraction of the dollars (real dollars, not nominal ones) that we put into the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, along with some engineering sense. We are doing space on the cheap, and ignoring ways of improving it. If we were finding new and useful information about the dangers and engineering necessary to enter space, great. But we are not - we are "discovering" that foam at the speed of sound can hurt things, that rubber is brittle in the cold, and that a launch date is more important than fixing a problem. That, to me, is not balls, but whistling in the dark and hoping you don't get snake-eyes this time round.
Yes, but after the first mile in the Shuttle, you're committed to another 1,000,000 miles or so. No pulling over to the side of the road and bailing early. I'll take the car.
I'm sure you are right. And if they were to say, "We have subjected Vista to more security checks and tests than any previous OS", I would probably accept that as fact. They do list many features that MIGHT enhance security. But all the security testing in the world does NOT demonstrate that a system is secure, because the system has to live in the real world, not the testing facility. And a wise company would know that, and rather than brag about something which is yet to be proven, might demonstrate that they understand that security is not a finish you apply like a coat of paint, but an enduring process (with apologies to Bruce Schneier) that they are committed to, rather than, "Here's the most secure OS in the world! Done! Finished! Buy it, and you will be secure!"
Anyone can design a system that they themselves can not crack. It's the other cracks they haven't thought of that count, and it remains to be seen how many there are.
I should mention that I agree that Joe Sixpack is the main threat to security - but allowing for this should be part of the design. Watching the multiplying security windows popping up confirming every little change to the files, even the aliases on a Vista desktop, makes me think that making USABLE security is still a New Thing at Microsoft.
Thank you for the polite thoughts, though.
You can't possibly know how secure an OS is until it's deployed in the wild, statistics are garnered, attacks are noted, etc., etc. To preemptively announce that "Vista [is] the most secure OS in the industry" before it is even released makes me think Microsoft is still high on itself.
Maybe it's just marketspeak, or maybe it's more of the same arrogance that they know better what is secure than reality does. I'll sit back and wait for a few years, thanks.
Either they (Ballmer and the Microsoft engineers) are really, really dumb/inexperienced, because it's pretty much impossible to remove all the spyware that accumulates on a Windows system, other than with a wipe, restore image/reload OS, apps, data from backups - or they are pathetically trying to show their sympathy for people who deal with Windows machines and all the crap that accumulates on them.
Hmmm, clueless execs & engineers or a OS that is impossible to maintain. I don't think either scenario makes me want to be their customer again.
....Perhaps, "Movies Delivered ON DEMAND Via Television Signal" might have been more descriptive and to the point?
Encryption is certainly available for your Mac, with one click of a checkbox in the Security Pref Pane. Or are you just saying FileVault is too unstable, or do you want more than the /Users directories encrypted?
In addition, you can create sparse encrypted disk images in OS X using Disk Utility, so while I don't believe you can encrypt your ENTIRE disk, you certainly can encrypt the parts that matter, I think.
I remember fooling around with encrypted partitions at some point, and I remember having a Windows glitch cause all my data to be lost - unlike when a few bad sectors could be manually worked around with various disk tools, if an encrypted file is "damaged", the whole thing is smoke - or at least it was back in 1998.
So, I think just the paranoia of having files being much more "destructible" has kept me from encrypting my hard drive on my laptop.
On the other hand, now I use OS X and Linux, and have multiple backups in multiple locations, so there is really no good reason why I don't use FileVault. Maybe I will..... but old habits born of bad experiences die hard.
For those too lazy to RTFA, just go for the pictures. The robot gets down on its knees, and pours the beer BACKWARDS over its head into the mug. It just looks... wrong. But very funny. I'd love to see pictures of the robot doing that in a bar somewhere.....
Where are those moderator points when I need them? Very well put - and I hope you find a way to get more time outside. Cheers.
Sealed off from the outside world, probably dark and dirty in that cave, with mysterious life forms growing within. Sounds like a typical /.ers house to me.
(Ducks)