Posts by Reinhard Schu 19 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2008
Trotting out the old Boeing cheerleader nonsense. The side stick makes the cockpit much cleaner, giving the pilots a clear and unobstructed view of the instrument panel. See this picture for an illustration: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Airbus_A380_cockpit.jpg/220px-Airbus_A380_cockpit.jpg
How exactly is a "control column" (I suppose you mean yoke) more "proper" than a side stick?
> Why should the pilot or his first officer have to hunt through a sea of indicators
> for a reason when an alarm chimes? Shouldn't the reason for the alarm be
> presented front and centre on the main screen?
You have just described the ECAM system in Airbus aircraft. But as the article stated, the ECAM did not display any error message, despite warning chimes being sounded. Sounds like another bug to me, and I wonder if Airbus are looking into that one.
This incident reminds me of Emirates flight 407, which very narrowly escaped disaster after one of the flight crew keyed in the take off weight incorrectly.
It seems staggering to me that there seems to be no clearly established 4-eyes principle for manual data entry, nor proper plausibility checking of keyed-in data by aircraft systems.
I totally agree. I never understood this whole ad supported business model. Who actually clicks on these ads or "sponsored articles"? I surely never do. In my view, the ad supported business model is not sustainable, people will grow tired of the clickbait "sponsored posts".
The correct, long term sustainable business model is to have free basic, ad supported service, and a paid-for, ad free premium service. With FB's massive user base, the premium subscription price could be in the single or low double digits per year. The premium subscriptions would provide a steady, predictable revenue stream.
I can help the 2Kates out with their bafflement about how the Lizards know about the colour of their back and how they have the ability to seek out matching rocks. They don't. 2Kates are confusing cause and effect and have fallen victim to that frequent cognitive bias called Hindsight Bias.
Those lizards who, by pure random chance, happen to sit on a piece of rock that resembles their backs are less likely to get spotted by predators, so to naive observers it would seem that they are "seeking" out matching rocks.
"Civilian aircraft passenger seats all face forwards, simply because the passenger doesn't like flying backwards"
AC, you clearly do not get around much on civilian airplanes. 50% of the Passengers in BA Club World travel backwards, and passengers in business class in Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific and many other airlines sit at a 45 degree angle in a "herringbone" configuration. Personally, I always chose a backwards facing seat on BA, as it is safer and more comfortable during takeoff and landing.
Andus, it is possible to escape the earth's gravity without reaching escape velocity, going "slowly" as you say. However, this would be much less fuel efficient, since most of the fuel would be spent on the hovering portion instead of propelling the craft further from earth. Moreover, since more fuel would have to be burnt at higher altitude in order to keep the craft hovering, that same fuel would have to be carried along, requiring even more fuel to be carried through the lower altitudes. Below a certain speed, this would become impossible with conventional rockets, as the thrust of the rockets would be unable to lift the amount of fuel required from the ground. So, yes with a yet-to-be-invented light anti-gravity device with near infinite energy, you could slowly rise into orbit. Until then, we need to boost the rocket to escape velocity as low down as possible, burn up almost all the fuel (except that required later for maneuvering) and jettison the spent engine for additional weight loss.
Why don't they simply require all passengers to strip naked prior to boarding a flight.
I think this might actually boost the ailing airline industry. Just think of the new possibilities for loyalty schemes. The more frequent flyer points you have the hotter the babe you will be seated next to.
The essence of this rather long rant of an article is that the age of personal computing is coming to an end, to be replaced with vendor-controlled devices and cloud comupting.
Bring it on, I say. Two decades of personal computing has brought us nothing but botnets, malware and spam. The auther of the article laments the lack of "freedom" to install whatever software he wants on his device. However, Joe Public does not deserve that freedom, neither do they need it. It does more harm than good, as the never ending security issues with Windows show. All that Joe Public needs is a device that works, performs the desired functions and is secure, and especially is secure such that it does not turn into a malware and spam spewing zombie without its owners knowledge. The iPhone ticks all these boxes as far as I am concerned.
There will always be a small minority of power users who will want to tinker and have the freedom to do with their boxes whatever they like. They will continue to be able to do so, with a standard PC and an open source OS.
Joe Public, on the other hand, is much better off with closed, secure systems. The less control for Joe Public the better.
Next time you are offered a "100% SLA", check the small print to see if "scheduled or emergency maintenance" downtime is excluded. Chances are it is. Every single time I review bespoke SLA (with my lawyer's hat on) I pick up on this point and then have to explain to the provider that 99.99% means 99.99% and that they have to do their maintenance during the 0.001%.
"We fully expect that the criminal complaint...will result in the perpetrator spending some time behind bars - under UK law."
They clearly have a vastly optimistic view of the UK police and Crown Proscecution Service. Don't they know that they only people prosecuted in the UK are (1) those that commit minor infractions such as not closing their bin lids; (2) teenagers who download pirate copies of music and movies; and (3) those that fight back against burglars or muggers.
Not sure what planet the author is living on. $200 are not £100, we have already established that. And Atom-based netbooks do not cost £300-£400. A quick look at the current offers from the mainstream suppliers reveals Atom Netbooks are priced between £200-£300 and down to sub £200 if Linux based.
We would not need any of this "alliance" and fight against malware nonsense, if Windows did not make every PC user a superuser by default. If people had to do the equivalent of a linux sudo every time something tried to install itself, it would solve most of the malware/virus issues.
In London, Ofcom have all but abandoned the analogue radio spectrum and have left it to the pirate radio stations. It has become difficult to listen to legitimate radio stations as the interference from the loud pirate transmissions bleeds into the regular stations, even the BBC.
This looks suspiciously like deliberate policy to me in order to force peope onto DAB.
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