Posts by Bob Wheeler 381 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Oct 2007
@ AC.
On reflection I do think I put forward an 'optimistic' view, or perhaps it is a veiw of what I hoped to be the case rather than what is.
i've started to the read the Charles Haddon-Cave (Nimrod inquiry), but as it's some 587 pages long it may take some time! However so far, it is a surpising easy read for a non (aircraft) techie.
I've always worried why the Nimrod (based on the Comet 4) was kept in servie so such a long time, but I surpose that is more a question around MOD purchasing/specifications and the almighty mess that is.
When the Boeings/Airbuses of the world design/upgrade a aircraft one of their over-riding goals is "let’s not make an aircraft that falls out of the sky". So their go to great lengths in the design/specification/building of the aircraft so ensure as far as possible, and then some, that this all the passengers arrive alive.
If you look back in history of the DH Comet the design flaw in the shape of the windows led to a number of fatal crashes from hull/metal fatigue. The point being that DH never recovered from this, in any meaningful way as the manufacture of commercial airliners.
How many aircraft have been lost due to a design flaw over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years?
Can they make things better, sure they can.
Should they be complacent with security/resilience of the 'fly-by-wire' etc, coupled with advent of powerful table/phones on the plane, and high end equipment on the ground with high speed communications, in the hands of folks that may not think kindly of others. Absolutely not.
Are the airline designers complacent? I very much doubt it. They have too much to lose.
On the half-dozen times I've been to the US, they have always had a significant lack of humour.
On one trip they where very perplexed that my wife was travelling under her maiden name - we had only been married a year at that point and she hadn't renewed her passport. They just couldn't get their heads around that one.
Some years back, at the immigration desk I got asked "Have you been to <some US city> on such <date>", I said no, and the guy just said "OK thanks, enjoy your vacation".
I never knew what prompted such a specific question, and the guy did not seem much bothered by my anwser.
"Assange's lawyers argued that the Swedish arrest warrant should be thrown out because it cannot be enforced while Assange is holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy"
It can't be enforced becuase the guy is on the lamb.
How can any lawer keep a stright face when putting forward this faulty twisted logic?
Following on from some of the Snowden leaks/reports it is niegh on impossible to be certain that a modern PC does not have any covert backdoor/keylogger/etc either designed and built-in or added during shipping.
So, do you go back to a basic manual typewriter, or perhaps it can a time to devlope a new approach to hi-tech,
Anyone for Steampunk word processing?
New keyboard needed please.
Oh, and some screen wipes.
I have always told tut' management, that "The Register" is in-depth, demanding research, keeping up with industry trends, cross market infussion of ideas, peer-to-peer networking, and just taking the piss out of stuff............
Over the years I've seen the odd video review where they drop a phone from 5/6ft to simulate dropping your phone on the pavement (sidewalk). Drop it into a bucket of water - to simulate (it's lunch time so I won’t pollute your mind with that mental image - Thank you Steven R - bar-steward), all reasonably average simulations of what might happen to a phone real life.
But an "assault rifle"?
My assumptions, which may well be complete shite, but here goes.
#1 The pilot of the PD helicopter, will have a significant amount of training and experience to be allowed to fly over the city at the low level (800ft) that the PD require without crashing/putting the general population at risk.
#2 The pilot, will be keeping a good lookout for other ‘stuff’ around him - to the left and right, above and below, things like other aircraft, skyscrapers, not just stuff in the direction he is heading in.
#3 So the pilot has ‘seen’ the ‘vehicle’, to one side/a little above/a little below, and then at some later point considers it to be in such close vicinity and/or changing direction that he veers off to avoid a mid-air collision.
I’m not sure how close the helicopter and the quad drone where, nor do I know what shade of smelly brown the pilot’s keg’s were afterwards, but I assume they became smelly enough to follow the quad drone, and explain the facts of life to the dim-witted owner.
Las Vegas is a very 'different' place to anywhere else I have ever been to!
Wife and I, walking around the hotels taking in all the sights, as you do. Went looking for the canals - I thought I would get extra points for the romance!! - so I kept saying they must be on the lowest floor, I mean who would build a canal upstairs on the 3rd floor. come on, who builds a canal, with so many million gallons of water on the 3rd floor.... who does that?????
Spot on. My understanding of the CAA/FAA etc to provide the saftey for different types of use of Airspace, whether your in A380, a vintage Tiger Moth, your paraglider, hot air ballon etc.
The type of airspace, ATZ's, air corridoors, NOTAM's all allow, (or at least shold allow) everyone to do their thing without endangering anyone else.
I would have thought, that these things would be covered the same way as any other Radio Controllered Model, sure they may have more 'smarts' built in then the old RC models, but they are still RC craft.
This numpty taking to 3,000FT close to a commerical airport is just plain mad.
Woe Tale 1:
I looked after 6 Netware servers in the finance Department when one day I got a call from a user saying "The network is dead, all the servers are dead". I checked the monitor dashboard, all servers showed green. the other phone lines weren’t melting so I told the user "Nah, all is well, but I'll send someone down to check it out". That afternoon, the news came back that the problem was the users mouse had stopped working - ful of fluff warped around the roller ball.
Woe Tale 2:
A user was having a problem unable to remove 3.5inch floppy on his machine. Went along to find out that he had used a floppy in the drive but the metal sliding cover had come off, inside of the drive. So he naturally, instated of reporting it, tried to force another floppy into the drive, thinking that the detached metal sleeve would magically attach itself to the floppy. It didn't work.
Payback 1:
The head boss of the IS/IT section wanted one of these new-fangled PC thingies in his office. So I duly ordered up a top of the line IBM PS/2 Model 30 (that shows how long ago this was)
I set the machine up on my desk, gave the boss a quick demo of the machine working so he was happy. Then moving the machine to his office, set everything up, plugged in all, but on cable. Out of curiosity I wanted to find out how long it would take for him to notice that the power cord was missing. The answer was three years.
Payback 2:
A boss had sent out a memo (paper memo in those days) to all staff saying “no-one is permitted to move/re-arrange their office desks for any reason without my prior written permission”. About a week later, I was working late so went into the boss’s office and cleared the top of his desk, and then turned the desk through 180 degrees and put everything back on his desk. The next morning, there was a very loud scream of pain when his knees hit the wooden back of his desk. The thing that always got me was that the boss was convinced it had to have been two people to pull of this prank, of picking up his desk and turning it like that, to the extent that he came over to me (he knew I had stayed late) and asked me who else worked late the night before. If he ever knew it was me, he never said a word to me about it!
When ever the word 'almost' is used, it mean "not quiet" or "less than"
e.g
Q: Are we there yet?
A: Almost there: in other words, not quiet there yet.
Q: Is 0.999 recuring equal to 1.0
A: It almost qual to 1.0: in other words it is less than.
All good points.
with my crystal ball, I see these things coming in two flavours.
For the car without any controls would be of use in a 'closed' environment, say a city centre, where there is no interaction with any other type of traffic.
The more open type/mixed traffic conditions of auotmated self-driving car will still have all the controls to allow manual driving which can be used for when the computer just can't work what to do.
There is still a lot of work to be done before any of this is even close to a commerical product that would be allowed on the roads in any meaningful volume.
Oh dear, how we forget the past.
Five-Eyes - started in 1940's, not surprisingly trying to figure out what the Germany/Japen where planning. The use "Colossus" machines was a major break-through. Then along came the Cold War. The "Colossus" machine where still being used, now for trying to crack Russian communications. The Echelon system was developed for two reasons, to spy on Russia, and to spy on each of the other Five Eyes (UK spy on US, US spy on UK then swap results), then share the results.
The problem with 9/11 was not that all the TLA's in the US could not monitor comminication, but that they did not SHARE with each other.
I can testify to the American lack of humour, at least within the passport control/immigration desk.
I flew into Seattle Airport, it had been a long flight, jet-lag, needing a smoke etc, I gave a 'sarcastic' answer to a standard question. Five hours later I was allowed into the good old US of A.
Britsh Humour does not always travell well......
I don't understand what all this fuss is about.
Goggle is a search engine, they don't hold/control/own the data/information.
So if I was of the opinion that some article/information about me should no longer be viewed by the world, why would I not deal with the ower/hold of the source rather than the search engine.
Getting Goggle to remove something from a search result does not remove the source, or prevent another search engine from returning the result.
Whatever your view on Goggle is, they do not actually own the web. While they are branching our in other areas, basically they are a search engine, that makes money from selling ad's.
Umm, been thinking more about this, sad, oh so very sad.
I'm now not so sure about the subtraction side of things and how that might effect the numbers.
While you just moving the trend line to the left, what happens when it crosses the boundary and it moves from the '1' column to the left, and therefor falles into the '9' column.
I like basements, nice and snug, not to many visitors........
Nurse, Is it time for my meds yet?
I was thinking more about this last night - sad I know.
Given I'm not an accountant, statistican or an auditor, evil or otherwise.
Anyway, if your looking at a set of transtions between 2500.00 and 5000,00 say. The smallist unit that cna change is 1 cent/penny, i.e. 2500.00 next value is 2500.01.
So if you then multiple by 100, to get to whoel number.
Next to look at the conecpt of limits, I thought that if muiltpling is OK (i.e. does not dsiruput the use of Benford's law) then why not divide. As the lowest limit 250000, then use that, but then I thought more and that would leave us with everything in the range of 1 and 2, not very helpful.
So why not subtraction, you can't use the lower limit as potentional you get Zero, for some transactions.
So howabout subtracting 249999 from each trancation. This would leave everything in the range of 1 upto 250001.
By the time you then only look at the leading digit would/should fit into Benford's Law?
"Quantum Mechanical Interpretation"
I'm going to make this my new catch all responce to any question at work.
Boss: "Hey, did the backups work last night?"
Me: "Quantum Mechanical Interpretation says that if I check then they might have, or might not have. So to be safe I won't look."
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