Posts by Juhani Vehvilainen 22 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jul 2007
I thought is was a (somewhat weird and unusual) typo. Until I checked. Now I think it's a part of the scam - it's a filter. They don't want to do business with anyone "smart" enough to see their story is batshit crazy. (They may have made the filter slightly too difficult to pass though but I digress.)
TCAS only issues "climb" or "descend" commands, in other words it operates only in the vertical dimension, turning left or right is not an issue. But you're right in that when TCAS tells you to climb or descend, you do exactly that irrespective of what the ATC says or has said (because the TCAS command is based on an automatic negotiation between the two planes so the commands are guaranteed to be coordinated - one is descending while the other one is climbing).
The AoA sensors are not critical in that the plane can fly just fine with them as long as the pilots (and the flight control computers) know to ignore that input modality altogether with a failure (and two sensors are fine for that). Now airspeed, attitude and altitude information is actually critical and those sensors/systems are typically (at least) triple redundant (and there are always even those steam gauges for them).
I guess you read it slightly wrong. The way I see it microbial life was not posed as an as alternative to life but as as an alternative to "natural geologic processes." (I also oppose the word "natural" here as there's nothing unnatural about life either, microbial or otherwise.)
So the options are: microbial life or geologic processes.
Excellent points Don, couldn't have said it better. And while we're at it could we finally please add the following items to the curriculum:
* A "computer" is a grey box or sometimes black with a transparent panel and blue lights inside
* Computers are made of motherboards, chips (things get kind of complicated now as there are actually not one but two types (Intel and AMD) but bear with me) and graphics cards. Unbelievably some early steam-operated machines (not really computers because they didn't have an Intel or AMD on the motherboard, like the early Crays) actually didn't have a graphics card and in fact science has yet to establish how the things were used in the first place
* There are three programming languages: VB and VC+. Well yeah that's two actually. Computer scientist also know one that escapes me but I've heard of at least this excellent painting program thingy was written in it
* However the hardware by itself doesn't do much, to make it do some useful work you have to use the Start thing and "start" something, hence the name. Or reboot.
* The windows of a computer are sometimes called an "operating system" for obscure historical reasons that no non-leftist remembers anymore
* The most advanced computer scientists actually divide the windows's into multiple categories, there's the plain Windows, Windows Server, Windows HPC, Windows for Spaceships, Windows for Avionics.
I think that about covers it.
People seem to prioritise constancy over just about everything. That's the only explanation I can think of for the love affair that the public has with Microsoft, demonstrated ad nauseam by the comments every time a story like this comes up.
People: don't worry. Nobody is going to take Microsoft away from you. You need to have some faith here: the company can take care of itself. You may not understand what the issue is here and that makes you feel uneasy but then again there's probably a lot in the universe that you don't understand so it's not like you're not used to it. Just relax and go on living your life. Nothing to see here.
(Paris Hilton because at least she's doing the right thing regarding this story and the 'Post comment' button)
The two of you sound like people who feel hurt by the "I'm a Mac - I'm a PC" ads or something similar, maybe an unfair and nasty remark about your computers made by a *nix hippie that you obviously couldn't really respond to because you're rocket and not computer scientists (hence the unfairness). If it's about the Apple ads: I believe they were actually just meant to be funny but if you believe that Steve did them because he wanted to make you feel bad then I agree, that's not nice at all. People should not make people feel bad. It's just not done. (And the internets should finally adopt the irony and humour tags. But I digress.)
As one of the guys with a job so embarrassing that it actually takes a computer to complete - or to get started - not just make it easier or faster (so no, it's not accounting, marketing, administration or cool stuff like that) I typically don't find myself spending my time with tools of the Windows ilk. It seems they're simply not intended to be used for those kind of purposes. Because of that I feel a bit guilty here by some kind of association. So will you please accept my apology for any wrongdoing committed by the hippie computer scientist acquaintance or SteveJ or whoever it was who hurt your feelings. It should never have happened. It's _completely_ ok to use Windows and be happy with it and feel sympathetic towards the great businessmen who made it happen! You should _not_ feel inferior because of that. Maybe it is exactly the right tool for the job you're using it for. Or maybe you just don't care that much, after all you have lives and families and families and families to attend to etc. Either way, you don't have to feel bad about it. Let go of the inferiority and be free!
I hope this helps.
Thank you Stu for pointing that out for us. We would be lost without your wisdom, well thought out arguments and insightful comments. You have the gift of being able to give a voice to the vast but mostly silent majority who loves the constancy that our Redmond rulers represent like constant things should be loved. Yours is a noble duty.
I'm actually quite fascinated by the fact that it seems a majority of the laymen who have an opinion on this are sympathetic to MS. One commenter likened it to Stockholm syndrome and indeed that sounds to me like a brilliant analogy. Maybe it's just human to form an emotional bond with whatever it is that you have around you?
I believe I sort of understand what De Zeurkous is saying - seeing stuff that was actually discovered and in many cases done _right_ decades ago be ignored for years and then come to public attention as a "new" invention (only this time quite often broken and it seems only because the authors simply ignored what was known about the subject decades ago) does have the potential to piss one off. Then again that's just an emotion and I'm not saying anything about how one should act on it.
On the topic of design and execution - someone remarked that it's the execution that matters. It's true that the execution is a challenge on its own but it's also true that you don't get very far if you completely forget and ignore the design during the execution. And that does seem to be happening a lot. It's as if you're trying to achieve the goal of avoiding head-on collisions on the road. The design is "when in risk of colliding with head-on traffic, turn (left|right) (depending on where you live)". No amount of masterful execution will replace that ingenious design as a general and complete solution of the problem.
I guess even dual-core is overkill if you're running Windows but luckily for Intel they're no longer (completely) limited by Microsoft's capabilities when it comes to developing operating systems and applications that can actually make use of advances like multi-thread/core CPUs. I for one would quite like an affordable quiet small form factor quad-core to drive my 1080p TV set... and for OS I'll settle for OS X (Solaris would be a contender were it not for lack of relevant and polished applications).
... just _might_ be that there's still absolutely no reason to believe that Linux violates anyones copyright. A bunch mostly invalid software patents, possibly, but copyright, no. Why the hell would it, the point of it being that a bunch of geeks wanted to see if they could build the thing themselves (and they did).
Still no sighting of "fanboyz/bois/boys" despite months of drumming...
Stu and friends, you might want to start thinking about a bit more novel way to display your "I have a life and I don't know anything about the science and engineering that goes into computers of any kind, hence I'm qualified to tell everyone that bad is the new good and worse is actually better and even if it's not, well Microsoft rules the world anyway because they said so on the telly" smugness lest someone start suspecting the bit about you actually having a life.
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