I suppose I made my point poorly. It's not that flying the local circuit is less of a hassle than flying the open skies -- it's just that, where I live, just getting to the open skies and staying in the open skies are trouble enough that, unless you fly regular, memorized courses through areas you are certain are not tangled up with teh Sea-Tac airspace or the Renton delta or the TFRs of the moment. It's planning around those that is the problem and that causes many newly licensed pilots to either stop flying or stick to flying patterns and occasional cross-country flights.
That said, although I complain about the complicated system, I am fully aware of its necessity. I can't pretend to know a better way to do it, but something inside me screams that there must be one. After all, it's just one more dimension of travel. How can that make it so much more complicated, logistically, than driving? The actualy flying isn't so bad, after all. It's just the watching out for the other guy that's a pain.
And for the record, I fly out of an uncontrolled, not very busy airport, so "local circuit" for me is harldy a hassle at all. It's the Sea-Tac ceiling over my head and the deltas all around that make it a bit of a pain.
Wow. I don't know what or where you fly, but if'd ever gotten lost five times in a flight, I wouldn't have my license today. And I failed my first checkride.
I actually find flying more relaxing, by far, than driving. It's less complicated -- never anything to run into besides one big, flat target unless you're in busy airspace. In a Buick, if you look at the rearview mirror too long you wind up permanently joined with the guy in front of you. In a Cessna 140, if you scan outside for traffic and trim the plan, you can spend a good deal of time looking at charts with only a periodic glance at instruments or outside.
Learning to fly is harder than learning to drive. Once you get your license, though, you realize that flying itself is pretty easy in a small plane like a 140. It's the layers of bearocracy that ruin it for most people; I've had my license for two years and haven't filed a single flight plan since I got it. Why? It's a waste of time. Sure, if I'm going to fly over a few states, I'd do it, and for precisedly that reason I rarely fly very far at all.
It's unfortunate that this has happened to general aviation; a lot of pilots, like myself, very rarely fly anywhere but circles around the runway an occasional short cross-country trips to practice navigation. They quickly grow sick of talking to control towers and remembering laundry lists of visibility requirements and filing flight plans and talking to weather briefers every morning.
Flying is truly a joy. I love it. But contrary to what everyone says, I find takeoff and landing to be the EASIEST parts, because those are the only times nobody is riding your ass to change your transponder or read off your position or say the magic words to get somebody's attention.
Slightly mroe on-topic: Flying cars will only become a reality when people can use them without talking to the FAA. If people need clearances and lists of weather minimums memorized, and if people need to be familiar iwth ever part of the plane like a pilot does, it will never happen. It's pretty simple, at least in the near-future, to build a straight-forward easy-to-flow VTOL/STOL aircraft for long-range commuting. But if we can't find a way to either automate some of the traffic or at least better control it (be it by overlaying a virtual visualization of "lanes" on the windshield or whatever else), it won't catch on because it's too complicated. Just like general aviation, which is unfortunately dying a slow death in most of the country.
But on the other hand, how many real-world victims of this weak security are there? Of your 14 neighbors with Wi-Fi, how many have suffered any sort of attack? My family's Wi-Fi is open and our router even uses the default password, and frankly, though I'm aware of the dangers, I'm also aware of how remote the possibility of anyone taking advantage of them is.
It's true that I do live in a rural area, which no doubt changes things; I also leave the car unlocked (heck, my dad even leaves the keys in the ignition) and the house isn't exactly Fort Knox, yet in eighteen years nothing's happened.
Still, it seems like going to great lengths to secure Wi-Fi is, for the most part, paranoia. When I visit friends and bring my Tablet PC along, I ca just drop in on their neighbors broadband for the day. Sure, I chew up a tiny bit of bandwidth, and theoretically I could do some damage (their password is the default and their router is the same model as mine at home), but there's no incentive for me to do so, and in fact I'm grateful enough for the free wi-fi that harm is the last thing I want to come to their network.
I realize that I am living in sort of an idealistic pipe-dream of a free-wifi suburban socialist utopia, but it still seems like the wi-fi security issue just isn't much of an issue for the average user. Sure, for corporate users or government offices, but for the guy down the street? Why NOT share it with everyone on the block, if it has no noticeable effect on his performance or bills?
In other news, the new GeForce 8800 GTX Ultra XE Platinum Gamer's Choice Extra Soupy Overclocked Edition has been announced. For a low low price of $9,900, your computer can run with up to a zillion* PETAFLOPS** of graphics power!
*[Maybe] **[Not really]
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: Two or five PSUs 1 Kilowatt or higher Eleventeen Molex connectors Two PCI-Express ports (cooling fan may extend over up to four neighboring ports)
In other news, the new GeForce 8800 GTX Ultra XE Platinum Gamer's Choice Extra Soupy Overclocked Edition has been announced. For a low low price of $9,900, your computer can run up to a zillion* PETAFLOPS** of graphics power!
*[Maybe]
**[Not really]
MINIMUM REQUIREMENT:
Two or five PSUs 1 Kilowatt or higher
Eleventeen Molex connectors
Two PCI-Express ports (cooling fan may extend over up to four neighboring ports)
That's not a legitimate excuse for writing things more obfusce than they need to be for your target audience. If you are broadcasting in the US, it'd be stupid to broadcast in French and just expect that human beings, being so interested in learning, will attempt to pick up the language to better understand that broadcast and then never use it again.
Joe Sixpack doesn't care what strength normalized to mass or specific strength or anything of the sort is. He watches the evening news and wants a basic grasp of what they're talking about. He's not looking to build his own space elevators or nanotubes, he just wants to know whats up in the news.
Yes, people should try to learn things they don't understand when it serves them in some tangible way to do so. No, that doesn't mean we should broadcast all news at the maximum jargon level.
I'm not sure if this is kosher on/. or not, but the OP brief is a direct ripoff of an MSN Money article of (almost) the same name. I know because I read the MSN article this morning.
I did a lot of writing two years ago (my sophomore year) in Honors English, mostly by hand. However, the teachers would sometimes let you email an in-class essay by the end of the school day, so you could write in on a laptop (or in my case a PDA) and email it from the computer lab or wi-fi.
Always had to handwrite tests, though.
Seeing that eHarmony does most of its advertising on christian radio and the like, it's not entirely impossible that there are simply no non-Christians signed up who match your interests.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come on. This is funny.
Yes, but they flapped those feathers like nobody's business. So who's to say it's not a wing?
And it has a two-button mouse!
Ba-dum ksshh!!!
I suppose I made my point poorly. It's not that flying the local circuit is less of a hassle than flying the open skies -- it's just that, where I live, just getting to the open skies and staying in the open skies are trouble enough that, unless you fly regular, memorized courses through areas you are certain are not tangled up with teh Sea-Tac airspace or the Renton delta or the TFRs of the moment. It's planning around those that is the problem and that causes many newly licensed pilots to either stop flying or stick to flying patterns and occasional cross-country flights.
That said, although I complain about the complicated system, I am fully aware of its necessity. I can't pretend to know a better way to do it, but something inside me screams that there must be one. After all, it's just one more dimension of travel. How can that make it so much more complicated, logistically, than driving? The actualy flying isn't so bad, after all. It's just the watching out for the other guy that's a pain.
And for the record, I fly out of an uncontrolled, not very busy airport, so "local circuit" for me is harldy a hassle at all. It's the Sea-Tac ceiling over my head and the deltas all around that make it a bit of a pain.
"The "Mac Tax" on the mini is below $200."
A $200 premium on a $500 computer is sort of serious. And the premium just goes up if you try to upgrade the meager hardware.
Wow. I don't know what or where you fly, but if'd ever gotten lost five times in a flight, I wouldn't have my license today. And I failed my first checkride.
I actually find flying more relaxing, by far, than driving. It's less complicated -- never anything to run into besides one big, flat target unless you're in busy airspace. In a Buick, if you look at the rearview mirror too long you wind up permanently joined with the guy in front of you. In a Cessna 140, if you scan outside for traffic and trim the plan, you can spend a good deal of time looking at charts with only a periodic glance at instruments or outside.
Learning to fly is harder than learning to drive. Once you get your license, though, you realize that flying itself is pretty easy in a small plane like a 140. It's the layers of bearocracy that ruin it for most people; I've had my license for two years and haven't filed a single flight plan since I got it. Why? It's a waste of time. Sure, if I'm going to fly over a few states, I'd do it, and for precisedly that reason I rarely fly very far at all.
It's unfortunate that this has happened to general aviation; a lot of pilots, like myself, very rarely fly anywhere but circles around the runway an occasional short cross-country trips to practice navigation. They quickly grow sick of talking to control towers and remembering laundry lists of visibility requirements and filing flight plans and talking to weather briefers every morning.
Flying is truly a joy. I love it. But contrary to what everyone says, I find takeoff and landing to be the EASIEST parts, because those are the only times nobody is riding your ass to change your transponder or read off your position or say the magic words to get somebody's attention.
Slightly mroe on-topic: Flying cars will only become a reality when people can use them without talking to the FAA. If people need clearances and lists of weather minimums memorized, and if people need to be familiar iwth ever part of the plane like a pilot does, it will never happen. It's pretty simple, at least in the near-future, to build a straight-forward easy-to-flow VTOL/STOL aircraft for long-range commuting. But if we can't find a way to either automate some of the traffic or at least better control it (be it by overlaying a virtual visualization of "lanes" on the windshield or whatever else), it won't catch on because it's too complicated. Just like general aviation, which is unfortunately dying a slow death in most of the country.
But on the other hand, how many real-world victims of this weak security are there? Of your 14 neighbors with Wi-Fi, how many have suffered any sort of attack? My family's Wi-Fi is open and our router even uses the default password, and frankly, though I'm aware of the dangers, I'm also aware of how remote the possibility of anyone taking advantage of them is.
It's true that I do live in a rural area, which no doubt changes things; I also leave the car unlocked (heck, my dad even leaves the keys in the ignition) and the house isn't exactly Fort Knox, yet in eighteen years nothing's happened.
Still, it seems like going to great lengths to secure Wi-Fi is, for the most part, paranoia. When I visit friends and bring my Tablet PC along, I ca just drop in on their neighbors broadband for the day. Sure, I chew up a tiny bit of bandwidth, and theoretically I could do some damage (their password is the default and their router is the same model as mine at home), but there's no incentive for me to do so, and in fact I'm grateful enough for the free wi-fi that harm is the last thing I want to come to their network.
I realize that I am living in sort of an idealistic pipe-dream of a free-wifi suburban socialist utopia, but it still seems like the wi-fi security issue just isn't much of an issue for the average user. Sure, for corporate users or government offices, but for the guy down the street? Why NOT share it with everyone on the block, if it has no noticeable effect on his performance or bills?
What does J.K. Rowling have to do with the best writers?
Dear god, don't let parents hear about this.
In other news, the new GeForce 8800 GTX Ultra XE Platinum Gamer's Choice Extra Soupy Overclocked Edition has been announced. For a low low price of $9,900, your computer can run with up to a zillion* PETAFLOPS** of graphics power!
*[Maybe]
**[Not really]
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
Two or five PSUs 1 Kilowatt or higher
Eleventeen Molex connectors
Two PCI-Express ports (cooling fan may extend over up to four neighboring ports)
In other news, the new GeForce 8800 GTX Ultra XE Platinum Gamer's Choice Extra Soupy Overclocked Edition has been announced. For a low low price of $9,900, your computer can run up to a zillion* PETAFLOPS** of graphics power! *[Maybe] **[Not really] MINIMUM REQUIREMENT: Two or five PSUs 1 Kilowatt or higher Eleventeen Molex connectors Two PCI-Express ports (cooling fan may extend over up to four neighboring ports)
That's not a legitimate excuse for writing things more obfusce than they need to be for your target audience. If you are broadcasting in the US, it'd be stupid to broadcast in French and just expect that human beings, being so interested in learning, will attempt to pick up the language to better understand that broadcast and then never use it again.
Joe Sixpack doesn't care what strength normalized to mass or specific strength or anything of the sort is. He watches the evening news and wants a basic grasp of what they're talking about. He's not looking to build his own space elevators or nanotubes, he just wants to know whats up in the news.
Yes, people should try to learn things they don't understand when it serves them in some tangible way to do so. No, that doesn't mean we should broadcast all news at the maximum jargon level.
Life being more bearable isn't an improvement?
Did anyone else read this an instantly think of the Varmint Killer from Destiny's Road?
*Bushes rustle*
*Wah-KSSSH*
There goes another Linux!
Maybe I'm just a nerd... (unlike you all, right?)
Maybe it would help clarify if he'd said that in fifteen minutes they had lost 15% or more on profits?
And now I notice the "Associated Press" icon, and that the Yahoo story (didn't RTFA) is the same, and MSN was just running a syndicated column. Oops.
I'm not sure if this is kosher on /. or not, but the OP brief is a direct ripoff of an MSN Money article of (almost) the same name. I know because I read the MSN article this morning.
Wow. I must have been a pretty tame 12-year old.
I hope you notice the assumption you make.
That should be, thank her sometime IF...
Not so "perma" after all, I suppose...
Now, they grew out of the dark matter.
Sheesh.
I did a lot of writing two years ago (my sophomore year) in Honors English, mostly by hand. However, the teachers would sometimes let you email an in-class essay by the end of the school day, so you could write in on a laptop (or in my case a PDA) and email it from the computer lab or wi-fi. Always had to handwrite tests, though.
Woah, that is a ridiculously cool trial. And yeah, OneNote is great, especially on a Tablet PC.
Seeing that eHarmony does most of its advertising on christian radio and the like, it's not entirely impossible that there are simply no non-Christians signed up who match your interests.
My head just imploded. Hold on, let me go get my Nerd pants on...