- The presumption is that the stuff they actually can't see doesn't 'seem' like anything else, except it does 'seem' like water. So they think it's water. I'm a little concerned they went out on a limb here, but nothing that couldn't be settled by sending up a rover and tasting it. Right?
- All the ideas that colonizing the Moon if for no other reason than to launch from there seem to think the Moon has, among other things, minimal problems with waste, pollution, and climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. We've sent precious little there, and already thre are concerns about potential pollution and abuse .
By all means, let's get up there and mine out all the water, uranium, and silica before someone else does! Sure!
ps- I think there have been complaints about how we have treated the Moon and other objects.
Most USB chargers for headsets and such are so light there can't be much of a transformer in there. I got to crack open one of my spares and see how it's done.
There are several patents for transformerless power supplies powered by AC mains. Protection could be by several means, from fuses to varistors to crowbar circuits.
It can be done, and can be safe, but I would want a three-wire supply cord. A two-wire gets a lot more interesting.
And at it is at least possible that a transformer could short primary to secondary, though I would expect the design to force an over current and blow a fuse/etc fairly quickly.
And 'switched mode' is the sort of language this study would use. Such supplies are considered 'switching power supplies', not switched mode. Switching is the design mechanism, not a mode.
I'm somewhat familiar with these, having serviced various office machines from the 70s to 90s, and most every desktop calculator used some form of a switching power power supply, some very inventive. Back then a transformer was critical to step the voltage from the oscillator, but even that can be dispensed with if you drive the voltage close to the desired regulated output, and then you just use a low-pass filter as you always did on the secondary side of the transformer. Many of the transformers doubled as an inductor in the oscillator circuit, where today you would probably just run a chip. I made few using 555 timers, and today you would probably do it all in a 5-lead package and include regulation and protection. Now going from 110/220v to 5v or 24v was pretty hairy in the 'old days', but it is doable now. Most notebook adapters I see must have transformers in them. Anyone seen a transfomerless PC power supply?
"If you specialized everything, the number of designs for each part drops drastically (So instead of needing 50 models of CPU, you'd only need 3 or 4. Plus 2 or 3 GPU modules. Plus 2 or 3 FPU modules, etc)... "
Um, right now, you have 50 or so CPU models to accomodate the perceived value of specialization. This impacts choices of CPU speed, caches and their sizes, FSB size, etc.
How this is improved by making 50 or so SKUs of various modules is beyond me. Not to put too fine a point on it, but instead of 50-60 CPU SKUs, you think 50-60 SKUs of various components is a better idea?
Now, the idea of choosing and changing the mix, to add more vector modules and then add more FP modules for other purposes sounds coo,, but honestly, how often do you bother to upgrade your CPU now? Don't you take advantage of system board improvements often?
And we still haven't dealt with the problem of distance. When the FSB starts going over GHz, you will have lots of problems with interconnects. Optical is the future, but it doesn't seem to be in sight yet. So I think this modular concept will play out on-die, not as multisocket options.
If at all. Intel is banging out higher- and higher-speed chips, AMD is getting better fab ability daily, and ARM chips are knocking on the door and want in on the action. This is a great time to be building systems. Let's see, faster or cheaper? Both? Remember the 486 days?
As bus speeds go higher and higher, you want components closer together, not further apart.
Change your model to putting specialized components on the die, and youa re on the right track. Unless something like optical busses come mainstream, in which case multiple sockets make some sense. Multipurpose sockets that allow you add vector-specific processing to your system for gaming, vs. I/O or GP processing for servers, vs leaving them empty for the budget.
But I think on-die specialization is the near future. Optical seems a long ways from here relatively speaking.
The authors don't realize any if not most laptop power supplies use direct conversion, the transformer is gone. Ballasts are a feature of nearly every flourscent light, have been for decades. 'Energy-efficient' is not the distinguishing factor for these transformers.
Low-power DC-DC convertors have been in common use for consumer electronics since the 70s, especially in anything with a vacuum-flourescent display; VCRs, microwave ovens, radio-alarm clocks, your car.
This article is, IMHO, full of crap. I can make that shit up in an afternoon with some great-sounding theories. All crap.
"Yeah, those USD500 drones aren't gonna fly across the pacific, atlantic or artic oceans anytime soon."
Yeah, that is NOT a problem. Those $500 DIY drones might increase in cost to $600, but they can get from China to the U.S. just fine.
Think balloons and cell phones. Not difficult at all, just a little imprecise. But once you get them over a U.S. city, how much does it matter which city?
I'm not that smart. This is already being worked out. Hell, scavenged camera phones and r/c planes are already a hobby. Add some HE and you've got a nuisance that would just drive the Pentagon crazy.
NetWare has been doing block suballocation for a while now. Not a bad way to make use of a larger block size, and it was crucial when early 'large' drives had to tolerate large blocks, at least before LBA was common. Novell tackled a lot of these problems fairly early as they lead the way in PC servers and had to deal with big volumes fairly quickly. Today, we take a lot of this for granted, and we are swimming in disk space so it's not a big deal. But once upon a time, this was not so. 80MB was priceless. Those sure were the days, grooming volumes and wincing over a 5MB file... ahh....
Not the first time block size was trumpeted as the next Insanely Great Thing.
I wish Windows fully implemented it. Hard to say, though, since the info is vague.
I'm not asking that thr transmission go into reverse when the car is going 100+ forward. But it's somewhat obvious that some failsafes didn't work. Ask that driver. Terribly wrong. At least asking for the tranny to go into reverse should elicit some response, like slowing down so it CAN go into reverse?
Apparently driving habits are not the cause, at least not in a Lexus. You heard or read any of the testimony from the woman that stated she put the transmission lever in reverse and it didn't stop the car? REVERSE? Obviously the transmission didn't answer the control input, it she would have had to sweep if up off the highway, which would be better than continuing to careen down the road out of control.
You want the update. Sounds like it can't be much worse the the prvious release.
ps - Not turning the engine off, trans to neutral, etc when the brakes are at max effort and the wheels are not slowing down seems like a massive fail. Massive. Fail. Akio Toyoda should be firing a lot of executives in the next few months, and then considering his next move.
Every time I read into the Ares program problems, I am left with the same impression; the Ares proponents desperately want to get it close enough to production that it can't be stopped. At that point, they will get the funding to fix the problems, since there is no turning back. Does this sound familiar to any/.ers? Many a bogus IT project is run like this.
Instead, there is a contrary group that wants to use some 'existing' technology and build Jupiter vehicles, faster and with less risk. Another familiar sceneario, I bet, since this is nearly the equivalent of a COTS-based project.
NASA's greatest values to the U.S. are the spin-off technologies and pure research. Certainly one of NASA's past contributions to the U.S. was spin-off in ICBMs and various other launch vehicles, including even cruise missles I bet. Having an active and robust missle industry sure makes it easier for the military to design and build what they want. As the need for ICBMs is waning, NASA is losing some covert support. Even the ISS is not enough to keep them in front of Congress and get enough funding to at least 'do something'.
Another Moon landing seems pointless to many, but even just leaving science on the Moon has potential. A Hubble replacement out there could be interesting - modular construction, stable platform, you could build Hubble x5 and really see something. Yes, it is a long trip to fix, but not insurmountable. And much easer to service when you get there. Something to be said for being able to stand up and fit a panel back in place, instead of an EVA ballet.
And a trip to Mars will teach us a lot about contained environments, ecology, new power sources, and even communications. It is the logical step to getting to Europa or Enceladus, and you know you want to go there.
The spin-offs could be incredible, and are unknown now. We owe a lot to the Apollo program, and any future manned exploration program will deliver as much or more.
Now, mind you, if NASA has to give up on manned exploration, they could always get the Mars rover teams to build a new set and turn them loose on Enceladus, for instance. Bigger solar panels or a nuclear power source, maybe different wheels, etc, but the design concepts and decisions should be largely the same. Not outrageously expensive, and hopefully they would hit another home run. Worth a try. But manned exploration is simply the highest goal, and worthy. And getting a relatively safe, functional vehicle running is critical.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the manned exploration question was answered in the late 60s. The Shuttle is not a manned exploration program, and never was. It's an ISS support program, with some near-Earth orbit delivery and repair functions possible. We always needed a heavy lift vehicle, and the Shuttle soaked up that money for 30-40 years. Kinda sad.
I don't see any commercial/private programs capable of replacing Ares. ESA might be able to do it, but they have their own priorities.
I snarfed a Lenovo X41 tablet last summer. It's not an iPad killer - uses a Wacom stylus, of course it's a Pentium M, 12" screen, but it gives me an interesting adventure into the tablet world. My experience?
- Touchscreens will be a little awkward at first. You have to be careful not to graze the surface, or you will be selecting that pr0n site you didn't want by accident. With a stylus, this is less a problem, since I only deal with waving the stylus too close to the screen and moving/selecting by accident. I have to press (click) to do damage, unless I'm moving something I didn't want to.. Of course.
- Holding a tablet in your lap sucks. the screen angle is wrong. So you cradle it somehow. Remember Die Another Day, when the Elliot Carver character was prancing around with a touch tablet, furiously typing tomorrow's headline of world destruction? Trust me, he doesn't do that for very long before he gets tired of the crooked arm and gets comfortable. But that's just a movie. You won't do that for more than 20 minutes. And not on a bus, or train, or any crowded place. It's not as comfortable as it looks, at least not for me.
- Touch-typing will suck bigtime, more than on a iPhone. The tablet in the crook of your arm moves more than you think it would. You will miss keys. The iPhone you can control the movement of. And do you often have your palm or another finger on the iPhone while you use another finger on the same hand to type with, and of course thumb-type? The iPad is too big to do that well. I have G1 also, and touchtyping is tolerable on it, but I love having a keyboard when I need to ssh in and get something done.
- Browsing on a table is very cool, so long as you go to sites you already know about. Entering search terms means you stop touching and start typing. See above. But once you're idly surfing around Google results, well, it's actually easy and fun-ish. Scrolling will be sweet on an iPad, since Lenovo doesn't have multitouch for stylus-bound tablets. Now, if I could get a fingertip stylus, well... But this is a win for the iPad, mostly.
- Setting it up and using a real keyboard? Well, that will probably mean a Bluetooth keyboard and a stand. Another thing to lose. Or someone will come up with a snap on carry case that houses a keyboard.
Compared to netbooks, an iPad gets you OS X, iPhone-like interface, a bigger but 4:3 screen. I bet Android netbooks will deliver a similar experience.
Instead of testng code, evaluating the design process, pretending the NHTSA can even begin to become expert in software design, how about applying the old standards to the new systems?
For instance, braking safety. I was listening to and reading the testimony from Rhonda Smith, where she even describes shifting her Lexus into neutral. Neutral?
A simple test, and I'm not an engineer, but shouldn't a car come to a stop with 'maximum' brake effort, despite the acclerator position? This is solvable in software - if the brakes are going into lock, and ABS is engaged, engine power and/or transmission state have to be compelled to answer the driver's command to stop. Traction control is already being used in many cars; NHTSA should be able to make a test capable of verifying that even multiple malfunctions are overcome.
Crap, my wife's 1995 Saab 900SE has a mode where the ECU shuts down the fuel pump if the engine stops running, on the assumption that something is terribly wrong, and spewing gas to a stopped engine is pointless if not dangerous. How do I know this? Her car developed a habit of stalling at stops. The real cause was a defective vapor recovery canister, causing loss of vacuum and low RPMs, and the ECU saw that as a stopped engine and made sure it stopped.
Certainly there are other states that can be tested for performance and safety, not some quality of performance standard. Most cars have 'safe' or 'cripple' modes to protect the drivetrain if something seems wrong, like the transmission in a gear that should not permit the indicated speed. My '95 Explorer does that, and it's only an OBD-I system. Acclerator position, wheel speed, and transmission mode should all correlate, and if something is wrong the system needs to cripple - slow down, set a max speed, etc.
Aircraft flight control systems are held out as an example of safety and reliability. Most of these, if not all, have to at least ensure the aircraft doesn't exceed the flight envelope and exceed safety limits. This is the sort standard and evaluation the NHTSA needs to focus on.
Maybe NHTSA needs to borrow a few investigators from the FAA and the military? They should be looking to Boeing, McDonnell, Electric Boat, General Dynamics for expertise in verifying safety in vehicles. Maybe even some NASA people. At least NASA seems to have turned the Shuttle program around a little too late. They certainly have a cautionary tale to tell, and a jaundiced eye towards the assurances of the 'experts' and trusting management.
Which would go a long way to reinstating a somewhat adversarial relationship between the regulators and the industry. There should be some tension there. Hiring your industry's former employees is not the way to go.
We can do so much better. We just need to solve the real problems.
If you're buying it just to run any ROM you want, you will fail. Eventually some ROM will not be ported to it, and you will wonder why you spent the money.
Loading Cyanogen on a Dream/G1 basically requires:
1. Downgrading the current software back to RC29 (I think). 2. Using a hack to get root access. 3. Downloading a new cyanogen-friendly restore image etc. 4. Robooting into that and then downloading the ROM of your choice. 5. Reboot, do the thing, boom, Cyanogen!
There are lots of resources for steps to do this. Can't find any?
"If you own a Rogers HTC Dream or Magic, you essentially have a Cheap Android Knockoff"
WTF? Dream is THE Android phone. AKA G1 in the U.S. Sheesh.
"I am stuck waiting on rogers, who are waiting on HTC to release 1.6 software for the phone"
I'm running 1.6 on my G1. Your complaint is with Rogers entirely. They haven't finished the OTA release. Can you get Cyanogen running on it? Might be happy with that...
"Google really dropped the ball with this and should have had some very strict standards..."
Yeah, that's the Open Source Way. No, actually, consensus is the Open Source Way. I'm not sure Android is really OSS in the way we think of OSS. It's more a licensing thing. But then people complain that their fav Linux distro doesn't use their fav desktop as default. So either figure out how to change it, or change your distro.
I'm not far from making Cyanogen my permanent ROM. But I'm giving TMO some time to bring 2.x to the G1, if they can. If not, I can probably get all the cool 2.x stuff from another ROM, and that is the true beauty of Android.
Um, Droid is a Motorola phone. It just looks like an HTC. Sort of.
And I did read the post. Try reading my response.
I get the impression that their point was that phones dial 911 when you hold the 9 key long enough. Android phones do not do this, as many touchscreen phones do not. Touchscreen is different.
Maybe you should try UNDERSTANDING the posts.
And while 1.6 is older than 2.1, it is NOT OUT OF DATE FOR G1. 1.6 is the current ROM for the G1, and maybe even for MyTouch.
"A day later and he started having chest pains. The hospital told him to come back and they had another stent put in THAT DAY. He's fine now."
Nothing personal, and I'm glad your dad got the care he needed, but to do otherwise would be CRIMINAL. Even in Canada.
The complaints I hear from my Canadian friends are always about elective, non-critical care. Waiting a few months for a stent seems a little long for me, but waiting an extra year for a knee replacement was a painful experience for a friend from Nova Scotia. An old, old friend from Labrador got his replaced in month. Go figure. An even older friend in new Brunswick waited a year for lens implants, and fought tooth and nail for them. His argument was that his vision had deteriorated to the point that he was a danger to himself in the bathroom. The initial response was to put him in an assisted living facility. He's only 55, and is otherwise healthy. He just needs to be able to see well enough to avoid crashing into the door and falling. His cataracts are probably hereditary, though a few decades fishing for salmon without sunglasses probably didn't help. Didn't help him catch fish either, go figure.
in the U.S, no problem getting your stents. Just get a good MI going and they'll whip you right into surgery. If you're nearly dead, U.S. healthcare is very very good. If you're just in agonizing pain, well, you will have to make do with industrial-strength Ibuprofen. On Medicare, that is. Otherwise, get someone to read the policy for you.
Bruce, I am interested in how the Android kernel will get merged into the mainline.
When I say that phones have different needs, lots of people get all up in arms and ask which needs are those, and no there aren't any.
Much like embedded kernels, a phone kernel should probably be able to:
- let me make a 911 call with a minimum of delay no matter what else is going on. Android doesn't do this now. Lots of other phone OSs don't either. They should.
- accomodate some hardware, specifically hard keys. Android does well with this on my G1 with the volume keys, byt some others not so much. Not exclusive to Android, I know.
- answer the radio and get incoming calls serviced without delay. Seems like if nothing else, a smartphone should be a phone FIRST.
Then again, these could just be bugs. Not features. But Android going its own way for libraries etc is pure Google. They can't do that with mainline kernels, but I wonder if Google uses a mainline kernel now in their internal servers...
...and I can tell ya, it is not yet up to the standard of excellent OSS.
However, Cyanogen is barely part of the android community. He's clever, aggressive, and actually willing to work within the constraints, but he's also a bee in Google's bonnet. He does what they won't do, cause he caters to a smaller population of smarter users. To implement much of Cyanogen's stuff in OTA relases would require more testing, and of course trusting users like me with root. Some of us would be fine. Others would be calling their carrier and complaining about something they deleted. Well, they probably do that anyways, but for modded ROM users, we pretty much talk amongst ourselves and take the arrows.
Android is moving so fast it will take a while to settle down and get excellent. And then something else will come and take its place on the bleeding edge.
When I say dumped I mean dumped, discarded, tossed.
If I thought the read cache needed to be written out, I would be aghast. I do know how caching works. I just think the algoeithm win7 is using os too aggresssive.
I notice it when our testbeds get low on RAM. They take longer to come around than when we run XP.
"The OS will only use memory for cache when there is no other demand for that memory"
Ok, I'm not going to bother and read the smart people. I'm going to go straight to my point.
If you are using nearly all available RAM for disk cache, then EVERY REQUEST FOR RAM WILL REQUIRE CACHE DUMP.
It's like this;
If you have 4GB RAM and are using, say, 1.5GB for applications and system, and you use 2.2GB RAM for cache, then you are left with 300MB approx for any new demand. So any demand in excess is going to make your system dump cache, and it does take time. How much is an interesting discussion. And yes, we can consider if the request is going to be satisfied out of cache, but let's also assume if it is than that cache will not be dumped. That would be unfortunate.
Here's my beef with this much more aggressive caching in 7 v XP:
What the ^&)$ do you need 2.5G cache for?
What are the likely demands on caching? Office 2007? My XP machine at work rarely shows Office 07 components using more than 500MB RAM. 2G caching? Pagefile getting you down, you don't want to use that?
More to the point, how often would a real-world user be USING 2GB RAM, much less 4GB?
Well, I do. But real-world? I have 2-4 virtual machines running fairly often, and in XP I rarely get up to 3GB. Win7 would maybe get me into 4GB+, sure, and the pagefile would go crazy.
When Smartdrive first came out, we used to tune it down quite a bit to avoid hogging RAM. I know it's improved, and I've never worried about it since Win98, but the more I read about Win7's caching, the more I think it is there for some strategy here that has nothing to do with user demands, and everything to do with OS performance. Vista and 7 both cannot be descirbed as lightweight, so maybe this is really to keep the OS light on its feet.
Fine. But MS can't say so.
Another resource hog. Hopefully it won't hog anything we need, right?
Slashdot Mirror
... After RTFA, I was a little concerned;
- The presumption is that the stuff they actually can't see doesn't 'seem' like anything else, except it does 'seem' like water. So they think it's water. I'm a little concerned they went out on a limb here, but nothing that couldn't be settled by sending up a rover and tasting it. Right?
- All the ideas that colonizing the Moon if for no other reason than to launch from there seem to think the Moon has, among other things, minimal problems with waste, pollution, and climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. We've sent precious little there, and already thre are concerns about potential pollution and abuse .
By all means, let's get up there and mine out all the water, uranium, and silica before someone else does! Sure!
ps- I think there have been complaints about how we have treated the Moon and other objects.
Most USB chargers for headsets and such are so light there can't be much of a transformer in there. I got to crack open one of my spares and see how it's done.
I bet it's simple as dirt.
There are several patents for transformerless power supplies powered by AC mains. Protection could be by several means, from fuses to varistors to crowbar circuits.
It can be done, and can be safe, but I would want a three-wire supply cord. A two-wire gets a lot more interesting.
And at it is at least possible that a transformer could short primary to secondary, though I would expect the design to force an over current and blow a fuse/etc fairly quickly.
And 'switched mode' is the sort of language this study would use. Such supplies are considered 'switching power supplies', not switched mode. Switching is the design mechanism, not a mode.
I'm somewhat familiar with these, having serviced various office machines from the 70s to 90s, and most every desktop calculator used some form of a switching power power supply, some very inventive. Back then a transformer was critical to step the voltage from the oscillator, but even that can be dispensed with if you drive the voltage close to the desired regulated output, and then you just use a low-pass filter as you always did on the secondary side of the transformer. Many of the transformers doubled as an inductor in the oscillator circuit, where today you would probably just run a chip. I made few using 555 timers, and today you would probably do it all in a 5-lead package and include regulation and protection. Now going from 110/220v to 5v or 24v was pretty hairy in the 'old days', but it is doable now. Most notebook adapters I see must have transformers in them. Anyone seen a transfomerless PC power supply?
"If you specialized everything, the number of designs for each part drops drastically (So instead of needing 50 models of CPU, you'd only need 3 or 4. Plus 2 or 3 GPU modules. Plus 2 or 3 FPU modules, etc)... "
Um, right now, you have 50 or so CPU models to accomodate the perceived value of specialization. This impacts choices of CPU speed, caches and their sizes, FSB size, etc.
How this is improved by making 50 or so SKUs of various modules is beyond me. Not to put too fine a point on it, but instead of 50-60 CPU SKUs, you think 50-60 SKUs of various components is a better idea?
Now, the idea of choosing and changing the mix, to add more vector modules and then add more FP modules for other purposes sounds coo,, but honestly, how often do you bother to upgrade your CPU now? Don't you take advantage of system board improvements often?
And we still haven't dealt with the problem of distance. When the FSB starts going over GHz, you will have lots of problems with interconnects. Optical is the future, but it doesn't seem to be in sight yet. So I think this modular concept will play out on-die, not as multisocket options.
If at all. Intel is banging out higher- and higher-speed chips, AMD is getting better fab ability daily, and ARM chips are knocking on the door and want in on the action. This is a great time to be building systems. Let's see, faster or cheaper? Both? Remember the 486 days?
As bus speeds go higher and higher, you want components closer together, not further apart.
Change your model to putting specialized components on the die, and youa re on the right track. Unless something like optical busses come mainstream, in which case multiple sockets make some sense. Multipurpose sockets that allow you add vector-specific processing to your system for gaming, vs. I/O or GP processing for servers, vs leaving them empty for the budget.
But I think on-die specialization is the near future. Optical seems a long ways from here relatively speaking.
This study is useless.
The authors don't realize any if not most laptop power supplies use direct conversion, the transformer is gone. Ballasts are a feature of nearly every flourscent light, have been for decades. 'Energy-efficient' is not the distinguishing factor for these transformers.
Low-power DC-DC convertors have been in common use for consumer electronics since the 70s, especially in anything with a vacuum-flourescent display; VCRs, microwave ovens, radio-alarm clocks, your car.
This article is, IMHO, full of crap. I can make that shit up in an afternoon with some great-sounding theories. All crap.
We didn't have cell phones then, but same idea :)
But these could be the modern equivalent of buzz bombs.
"Yeah, those USD500 drones aren't gonna fly across the pacific, atlantic or artic oceans anytime soon."
Yeah, that is NOT a problem. Those $500 DIY drones might increase in cost to $600, but they can get from China to the U.S. just fine.
Think balloons and cell phones. Not difficult at all, just a little imprecise. But once you get them over a U.S. city, how much does it matter which city?
I'm not that smart. This is already being worked out. Hell, scavenged camera phones and r/c planes are already a hobby. Add some HE and you've got a nuisance that would just drive the Pentagon crazy.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...
NetWare has been doing block suballocation for a while now. Not a bad way to make use of a larger block size, and it was crucial when early 'large' drives had to tolerate large blocks, at least before LBA was common. Novell tackled a lot of these problems fairly early as they lead the way in PC servers and had to deal with big volumes fairly quickly. Today, we take a lot of this for granted, and we are swimming in disk space so it's not a big deal. But once upon a time, this was not so. 80MB was priceless. Those sure were the days, grooming volumes and wincing over a 5MB file... ahh....
Not the first time block size was trumpeted as the next Insanely Great Thing.
I wish Windows fully implemented it. Hard to say, though, since the info is vague.
I'm not asking that thr transmission go into reverse when the car is going 100+ forward. But it's somewhat obvious that some failsafes didn't work. Ask that driver. Terribly wrong. At least asking for the tranny to go into reverse should elicit some response, like slowing down so it CAN go into reverse?
Apparently driving habits are not the cause, at least not in a Lexus. You heard or read any of the testimony from the woman that stated she put the transmission lever in reverse and it didn't stop the car? REVERSE? Obviously the transmission didn't answer the control input, it she would have had to sweep if up off the highway, which would be better than continuing to careen down the road out of control.
You want the update. Sounds like it can't be much worse the the prvious release.
ps - Not turning the engine off, trans to neutral, etc when the brakes are at max effort and the wheels are not slowing down seems like a massive fail. Massive. Fail. Akio Toyoda should be firing a lot of executives in the next few months, and then considering his next move.
Every time I read into the Ares program problems, I am left with the same impression; the Ares proponents desperately want to get it close enough to production that it can't be stopped. At that point, they will get the funding to fix the problems, since there is no turning back. Does this sound familiar to any /.ers? Many a bogus IT project is run like this.
Instead, there is a contrary group that wants to use some 'existing' technology and build Jupiter vehicles, faster and with less risk. Another familiar sceneario, I bet, since this is nearly the equivalent of a COTS-based project.
NASA's greatest values to the U.S. are the spin-off technologies and pure research. Certainly one of NASA's past contributions to the U.S. was spin-off in ICBMs and various other launch vehicles, including even cruise missles I bet. Having an active and robust missle industry sure makes it easier for the military to design and build what they want. As the need for ICBMs is waning, NASA is losing some covert support. Even the ISS is not enough to keep them in front of Congress and get enough funding to at least 'do something'.
Another Moon landing seems pointless to many, but even just leaving science on the Moon has potential. A Hubble replacement out there could be interesting - modular construction, stable platform, you could build Hubble x5 and really see something. Yes, it is a long trip to fix, but not insurmountable. And much easer to service when you get there. Something to be said for being able to stand up and fit a panel back in place, instead of an EVA ballet.
And a trip to Mars will teach us a lot about contained environments, ecology, new power sources, and even communications. It is the logical step to getting to Europa or Enceladus, and you know you want to go there.
The spin-offs could be incredible, and are unknown now. We owe a lot to the Apollo program, and any future manned exploration program will deliver as much or more.
Now, mind you, if NASA has to give up on manned exploration, they could always get the Mars rover teams to build a new set and turn them loose on Enceladus, for instance. Bigger solar panels or a nuclear power source, maybe different wheels, etc, but the design concepts and decisions should be largely the same. Not outrageously expensive, and hopefully they would hit another home run. Worth a try. But manned exploration is simply the highest goal, and worthy. And getting a relatively safe, functional vehicle running is critical.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the manned exploration question was answered in the late 60s. The Shuttle is not a manned exploration program, and never was. It's an ISS support program, with some near-Earth orbit delivery and repair functions possible. We always needed a heavy lift vehicle, and the Shuttle soaked up that money for 30-40 years. Kinda sad.
I don't see any commercial/private programs capable of replacing Ares. ESA might be able to do it, but they have their own priorities.
So let's light this candle, ok?
I snarfed a Lenovo X41 tablet last summer. It's not an iPad killer - uses a Wacom stylus, of course it's a Pentium M, 12" screen, but it gives me an interesting adventure into the tablet world. My experience?
- Touchscreens will be a little awkward at first. You have to be careful not to graze the surface, or you will be selecting that pr0n site you didn't want by accident. With a stylus, this is less a problem, since I only deal with waving the stylus too close to the screen and moving/selecting by accident. I have to press (click) to do damage, unless I'm moving something I didn't want to.. Of course.
- Holding a tablet in your lap sucks. the screen angle is wrong. So you cradle it somehow. Remember Die Another Day, when the Elliot Carver character was prancing around with a touch tablet, furiously typing tomorrow's headline of world destruction? Trust me, he doesn't do that for very long before he gets tired of the crooked arm and gets comfortable. But that's just a movie. You won't do that for more than 20 minutes. And not on a bus, or train, or any crowded place. It's not as comfortable as it looks, at least not for me.
- Touch-typing will suck bigtime, more than on a iPhone. The tablet in the crook of your arm moves more than you think it would. You will miss keys. The iPhone you can control the movement of. And do you often have your palm or another finger on the iPhone while you use another finger on the same hand to type with, and of course thumb-type? The iPad is too big to do that well. I have G1 also, and touchtyping is tolerable on it, but I love having a keyboard when I need to ssh in and get something done.
- Browsing on a table is very cool, so long as you go to sites you already know about. Entering search terms means you stop touching and start typing. See above. But once you're idly surfing around Google results, well, it's actually easy and fun-ish. Scrolling will be sweet on an iPad, since Lenovo doesn't have multitouch for stylus-bound tablets. Now, if I could get a fingertip stylus, well... But this is a win for the iPad, mostly.
- Setting it up and using a real keyboard? Well, that will probably mean a Bluetooth keyboard and a stand. Another thing to lose. Or someone will come up with a snap on carry case that houses a keyboard.
Compared to netbooks, an iPad gets you OS X, iPhone-like interface, a bigger but 4:3 screen. I bet Android netbooks will deliver a similar experience.
Fight's on!
Tell the Saab tech that Saab is wrong on this one.
He also told me this is to prevent fuel spills and fires as a result of a crash.
And safety, not peformance.
Instead of testng code, evaluating the design process, pretending the NHTSA can even begin to become expert in software design, how about applying the old standards to the new systems?
For instance, braking safety. I was listening to and reading the testimony from Rhonda Smith, where she even describes shifting her Lexus into neutral. Neutral?
A simple test, and I'm not an engineer, but shouldn't a car come to a stop with 'maximum' brake effort, despite the acclerator position? This is solvable in software - if the brakes are going into lock, and ABS is engaged, engine power and/or transmission state have to be compelled to answer the driver's command to stop. Traction control is already being used in many cars; NHTSA should be able to make a test capable of verifying that even multiple malfunctions are overcome.
Crap, my wife's 1995 Saab 900SE has a mode where the ECU shuts down the fuel pump if the engine stops running, on the assumption that something is terribly wrong, and spewing gas to a stopped engine is pointless if not dangerous. How do I know this? Her car developed a habit of stalling at stops. The real cause was a defective vapor recovery canister, causing loss of vacuum and low RPMs, and the ECU saw that as a stopped engine and made sure it stopped.
Certainly there are other states that can be tested for performance and safety, not some quality of performance standard. Most cars have 'safe' or 'cripple' modes to protect the drivetrain if something seems wrong, like the transmission in a gear that should not permit the indicated speed. My '95 Explorer does that, and it's only an OBD-I system. Acclerator position, wheel speed, and transmission mode should all correlate, and if something is wrong the system needs to cripple - slow down, set a max speed, etc.
Aircraft flight control systems are held out as an example of safety and reliability. Most of these, if not all, have to at least ensure the aircraft doesn't exceed the flight envelope and exceed safety limits. This is the sort standard and evaluation the NHTSA needs to focus on.
Maybe NHTSA needs to borrow a few investigators from the FAA and the military? They should be looking to Boeing, McDonnell, Electric Boat, General Dynamics for expertise in verifying safety in vehicles. Maybe even some NASA people. At least NASA seems to have turned the Shuttle program around a little too late. They certainly have a cautionary tale to tell, and a jaundiced eye towards the assurances of the 'experts' and trusting management.
Which would go a long way to reinstating a somewhat adversarial relationship between the regulators and the industry. There should be some tension there. Hiring your industry's former employees is not the way to go.
We can do so much better. We just need to solve the real problems.
Don't buy the Nexus One.
If you're buying it just to run any ROM you want, you will fail. Eventually some ROM will not be ported to it, and you will wonder why you spent the money.
Loading Cyanogen on a Dream/G1 basically requires:
1. Downgrading the current software back to RC29 (I think).
2. Using a hack to get root access.
3. Downloading a new cyanogen-friendly restore image etc.
4. Robooting into that and then downloading the ROM of your choice.
5. Reboot, do the thing, boom, Cyanogen!
There are lots of resources for steps to do this. Can't find any?
"If you own a Rogers HTC Dream or Magic, you essentially have a Cheap Android Knockoff"
WTF? Dream is THE Android phone. AKA G1 in the U.S. Sheesh.
"I am stuck waiting on rogers, who are waiting on HTC to release 1.6 software for the phone"
I'm running 1.6 on my G1. Your complaint is with Rogers entirely. They haven't finished the OTA release. Can you get Cyanogen running on it? Might be happy with that...
"Google really dropped the ball with this and should have had some very strict standards..."
Yeah, that's the Open Source Way. No, actually, consensus is the Open Source Way. I'm not sure Android is really OSS in the way we think of OSS. It's more a licensing thing. But then people complain that their fav Linux distro doesn't use their fav desktop as default. So either figure out how to change it, or change your distro.
I'm not far from making Cyanogen my permanent ROM. But I'm giving TMO some time to bring 2.x to the G1, if they can. If not, I can probably get all the cool 2.x stuff from another ROM, and that is the true beauty of Android.
Um, Droid is a Motorola phone. It just looks like an HTC. Sort of.
And I did read the post. Try reading my response.
I get the impression that their point was that phones dial 911 when you hold the 9 key long enough. Android phones do not do this, as many touchscreen phones do not. Touchscreen is different.
Maybe you should try UNDERSTANDING the posts.
And while 1.6 is older than 2.1, it is NOT OUT OF DATE FOR G1. 1.6 is the current ROM for the G1, and maybe even for MyTouch.
"A day later and he started having chest pains. The hospital told him to come back and they had another stent put in THAT DAY. He's fine now."
Nothing personal, and I'm glad your dad got the care he needed, but to do otherwise would be CRIMINAL. Even in Canada.
The complaints I hear from my Canadian friends are always about elective, non-critical care. Waiting a few months for a stent seems a little long for me, but waiting an extra year for a knee replacement was a painful experience for a friend from Nova Scotia. An old, old friend from Labrador got his replaced in month. Go figure. An even older friend in new Brunswick waited a year for lens implants, and fought tooth and nail for them. His argument was that his vision had deteriorated to the point that he was a danger to himself in the bathroom. The initial response was to put him in an assisted living facility. He's only 55, and is otherwise healthy. He just needs to be able to see well enough to avoid crashing into the door and falling. His cataracts are probably hereditary, though a few decades fishing for salmon without sunglasses probably didn't help. Didn't help him catch fish either, go figure.
in the U.S, no problem getting your stents. Just get a good MI going and they'll whip you right into surgery. If you're nearly dead, U.S. healthcare is very very good. If you're just in agonizing pain, well, you will have to make do with industrial-strength Ibuprofen. On Medicare, that is. Otherwise, get someone to read the policy for you.
On a G1 and most any other Androidn phone, you need to get the Phone dialer screen displayed to be able to dial any number.
Pressing and holding '9' does NOT dial 911 on my G1, Android 1.6, Build DRC83.
I'm betting that if you read the manual you would have spotted this gem in the documentation.
All cell phones are no longer the same, my friend. Word up.
Bruce, I am interested in how the Android kernel will get merged into the mainline.
When I say that phones have different needs, lots of people get all up in arms and ask which needs are those, and no there aren't any.
Much like embedded kernels, a phone kernel should probably be able to:
- let me make a 911 call with a minimum of delay no matter what else is going on. Android doesn't do this now. Lots of other phone OSs don't either. They should.
- accomodate some hardware, specifically hard keys. Android does well with this on my G1 with the volume keys, byt some others not so much. Not exclusive to Android, I know.
- answer the radio and get incoming calls serviced without delay. Seems like if nothing else, a smartphone should be a phone FIRST.
Then again, these could just be bugs. Not features. But Android going its own way for libraries etc is pure Google. They can't do that with mainline kernels, but I wonder if Google uses a mainline kernel now in their internal servers...
...and I can tell ya, it is not yet up to the standard of excellent OSS.
However, Cyanogen is barely part of the android community. He's clever, aggressive, and actually willing to work within the constraints, but he's also a bee in Google's bonnet. He does what they won't do, cause he caters to a smaller population of smarter users. To implement much of Cyanogen's stuff in OTA relases would require more testing, and of course trusting users like me with root. Some of us would be fine. Others would be calling their carrier and complaining about something they deleted. Well, they probably do that anyways, but for modded ROM users, we pretty much talk amongst ourselves and take the arrows.
Android is moving so fast it will take a while to settle down and get excellent. And then something else will come and take its place on the bleeding edge.
Our testbeds do UAT for our newest app. Manual input, no scripts. We reimage them for different tests, and sometimes save an image for later use.
And these don't live in our AD domain. So they are simplier and get less antivirus.
Other than running our .NET/SQL app, these are simple machines.
My desktop is what gets a lot of VPC use.
When I say dumped I mean dumped, discarded, tossed.
If I thought the read cache needed to be written out, I would be aghast. I do know how caching works. I just think the algoeithm win7 is using os too aggresssive.
I notice it when our testbeds get low on RAM. They take longer to come around than when we run XP.
"The OS will only use memory for cache when there is no other demand for that memory"
Ok, I'm not going to bother and read the smart people. I'm going to go straight to my point.
If you are using nearly all available RAM for disk cache, then EVERY REQUEST FOR RAM WILL REQUIRE CACHE DUMP.
It's like this;
If you have 4GB RAM and are using, say, 1.5GB for applications and system, and you use 2.2GB RAM for cache, then you are left with 300MB approx for any new demand. So any demand in excess is going to make your system dump cache, and it does take time. How much is an interesting discussion. And yes, we can consider if the request is going to be satisfied out of cache, but let's also assume if it is than that cache will not be dumped. That would be unfortunate.
Here's my beef with this much more aggressive caching in 7 v XP:
What the ^&)$ do you need 2.5G cache for?
What are the likely demands on caching? Office 2007? My XP machine at work rarely shows Office 07 components using more than 500MB RAM. 2G caching? Pagefile getting you down, you don't want to use that?
More to the point, how often would a real-world user be USING 2GB RAM, much less 4GB?
Well, I do. But real-world? I have 2-4 virtual machines running fairly often, and in XP I rarely get up to 3GB. Win7 would maybe get me into 4GB+, sure, and the pagefile would go crazy.
When Smartdrive first came out, we used to tune it down quite a bit to avoid hogging RAM. I know it's improved, and I've never worried about it since Win98, but the more I read about Win7's caching, the more I think it is there for some strategy here that has nothing to do with user demands, and everything to do with OS performance. Vista and 7 both cannot be descirbed as lightweight, so maybe this is really to keep the OS light on its feet.
Fine. But MS can't say so.
Another resource hog. Hopefully it won't hog anything we need, right?
I just don't get it. Obviously.