Posts by Denarius 2180 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jun 2009
@Oliver. You will be pleased to know that many pro pilots fly light aircraft and gliders so they maintain "real" aircraft piloting skills. Some airlines encourage this after the reviews done after the AirFrance dump into the Atlantic. Some of the worlds best acro pilots fly heavies for a living so you have serious skills and training up front
@whitepines. In aviation safety is is sometimes referred to as the Swiss Cheese effect. So many holes have to line up for the event to happen. Any breaking of the lining up stops the failure. Multiple redundancy can be expensive or heavy but it is safe. Also the reason aviation has so many cryptic checklists and acronyms. However I feel more relaxed flying having done them as it means I am as safe as possible. Always feel edgy if I realise a check item was missed. And yes, the paperwork and inquisition if there is an event. BB is appropriate as there are now types who actively look for others faults to dob into aviation management for any trivial event
adding to previous commentards, I concur that API and codebase fragmentation is destructive to adoption. Secondly, times are toughening and new products, especially from M$ dont seem to be solving end users problems (if any). Few have cash for shiney shiney. Perhaps a two page layout might have uses but for now I prefer my reading using tree carcase. It has digital interface, requires no batteries and lasts decades if stored well.
Lastly, judging from the sludgy speed of Win10 x64 on my devices compared to *BSD or Linux, M$ would make a more salable product if it was much faster. It seems insane to need an i5 or better plus SSD to get nearly the same performance as a 486 with a 2 Gb spinning rust and windows 3.1
rightwing lobbyists ? Never left wing lobbyists who seem to be more feted by the remnants of media. Why does a description harking back to the dysfunctional French monarchy get dredged up when only current choices seem to be between different flavours of lying totalitarian bureaucracy ? In short, whats the difference between them ?
Indeed, Oz tends to kiss the boot or worse of its exploiters. That enough of the populace failed to vote for his party was a pleasant unexpected surprise. However, despite generally avoiding the economic suicide so beloved by the OMG we are all going to die mobs, many of the interesting candidates were ignored for more party drones. In short we are as stuffed as any other exWestern country.
@disgruntled_yank. Err, no. Most would say "Only 30% ???!!! In 2 decades of affliction by SAP applications has only meant rigid irrelevant rules, processes tripling in duration, process screens that were totally uninformative, as in "Now what" or and I am supposed to what ?" being common expressions, massive server buys and poorer as in often, no end result. The PHBs always seemed happy.
An acquaintance who claims SAP skills insists it is the developers who do a poor job, not SAP. That maybe, except I have never seen SAP projects replacing legacy code be anything but worse and expensive also. More than one of my colleagues has wondered if someone in upper echelons was being paid off. Personally I regard it as fashion driving suckers. Unfortunately even in retirement I have to use the thing.
@DougS: mainly needed One Child policy because of early 1960s baby boom encouraged by central gov. Given the Chinese empty city phenomenon and the shrinking labour pool in coming decades baby bonuses will probably appear soon. I suspect that China will follow Japan, Singapore and South Korea into population crash over the next 100 years.
with stuff more likely to collide as well as Redmonds offerings. To give illusion of fairness, Redmonds OS seems to more about freezing computers while 100% CPU happens for 10 seconds on one core while the others sit there and watch rather than a BSOD. Reminds me of early multiCPU HPUX boxes.
I digress. With 5G and this, snooping will be so much easier.
Now you've done it. Someone in current Oz Federal admin will see French public servants as an example to be followed by best practice private sector and State governments. Too late for banks as they achieved this bureaucratic nirvana decades ago. Public sector upper echelons motto could be summarised as "We are not happy until you are miserable." judging by the increasingly petty bureaucracy.
for once, DONT rush this probe. It might not drop very fast then. It would be nice for Europe to get something working on Mars. When the yanks finish imploding I suspect the rising powers may not be that interested any more in space exploration. Aside from that, I wonder if Europe would consider a lander for Europa after the proposed NASA lander has done its research. Sort of appropriate.
Who thought touch screens were a good idea ? Ask the instigators of Windows 8
Hate the bloody things. Wont respond to a finger poke, or sledgehammer, then a speck of dust brushes across phone and b*d thing does 10 horrible unwanted actions.
Has uses in small devices but that about it and even then I would like at least a few keys.
What happened to design symbolism ?
See the 1957 book "The Psychology of Everyday Things"
Insane having like controls not placed together. Throttles should be grouped with throttles, steering with steering, yes wheel and side thrusters etc.
The disintegration of the West continues.
See Marvin the Paranoid Android and interface with some cops spaceship.
IMNSHO, skepticism is appropriate. I for one wonder how well AI handles information hidden in ambiguities aka sarcasm. Context can help but also obscure. I fear nannyism far more as well as the OMGWAAGTD mobs of all kinds
Dabbsy,
well put. Not a hope of any robot thing hanging around working long enough to rust, let alone become a decade long threat. Now if only this were true of data mining. It may be wrong, but believed all the same. An electronic version of the old aphorism that lies fly and truth limps ?
Low paid, low status generally despised tech support staff and PHBs kowtowing to myopic short term politicians promising tax cuts and not mentioning the costs of tax cuts. Always baffled me that other nations governments outsourced to Merkin firms who in my experience were 10 years plus behind best practice.
Defiler, so right. I have satellite network because the middling defective duopoly in Oz means slow, unreliable service unless one lives in a business district or wealthy area. Big Swamp particularly because their DNS setup is not fit for purpose IMNSHO. Dealing with Floptus is a financial no-go.
8.8.8.8 was, regrettably, sometimes necessary. Landlines are unavailable outside of suburbia. When I went onto the satellite link, performance went up 10 fold. Still 1/8th of what I pay for but at least usable and affordable.
Charlie, good points. However, China have to use their over-capacity solar panels somehow. Might be same for supermagnet factories also. Also, China is building interesting nuclear reactors suggesting a practical concern for long term energy security, unlike the suiciding West. I suspect the Party leadership also like to breath without coughing.
As for currencies, The German Mark aka Euro might be valued at moment despite damage its use is causing in less efficient parts of Europe, (not sole cause I know), but still vulnerable when German economy goes into hard reverse.
Most international currencies like US dollar are fiat currencies. China owns a lot of USA debt. IMHO, a power shift will happen when China decides it can bear the loss and crashes the US dollar. Watch for oil deals in roubles and yuan. After that the Merkins can send delegations via yatchts to PomLand and France to learn how to become a 2nd world tourist trap now their empire is gone.
I agree with most of the assessments above. Global corps will increasingly avoid USA IP to avoid hassles. Also, as many originally big technology companies were USA in origin, there will be some confusion before general realisation strikes that only the C suite mostly lurks in USA. All real work, hardware and factory assembly is done in China. However, as Europe and USA go dark pushing renewables it is more likely all countries will have an economy crash after a mostly calm cold winter. If the western markets flounder Chinas leaders know they have a bigger problem. A suddenly impoverished middle class means instability. Flames welcome, it is a cold winter here.
Mine's the thick heavy overcoat with the balance pole beside it.
Mach
who said extra ? I thought the problem was getting them to pay any or a reasonable amount instead of small taxpayers having to wear costs. As it is, wealthy behemoths seem to enjoy asking for subsidies and spineless politicians race to bend over with taxpayer funds instead a jailing the CEOs and boards for extortion.
@Neoc,
but we used to have that. Federal highways State roads and local council roads, State electricity generators and distribution systems. Mostly sold off in a country with no real anti-monopoly laws. No wonder costs are reaching monopoly levels. People are now dying because they cant afford heating. Current crop of bought pollies tried to sell off the Snowy scheme to donors not so long ago. I fully expect them to try again with usual promise of tax cuts. No mention that water costs will rocket further.
It is amazing that any decent Economics 101 mentions natural monopolies and monopsonies but the Oz government and its bureaucrats and policy advisors seem to blithely unaware. One wonders how they were bought or whether western cultural stupidity has become so endemic that foolishness has become normalized in the seats of power.
Yanks armed forces are looking at proposals to develop air superiority and ground support aircraft. In short, tacit acceptance of one size fits all has failed. Again. Rotary support proposals are also interesting with what look like two good proposals which are very different. I like the Raiden, simply because helicopters have lower disk loading. I digress.
However, Mach 6 aircraft are not on cards until hypersonic ram jets move from dodgy experimental set ups to reliable engineering. Even then, given both Russians and Yanks are both building very long range air to air rocket powered weapons, what would Mach 6 plus actually achieve other than a heat trail easily spotted from orbit ?
what will happen if and when a firmware update breaks hardware badly in the shared routers/switches/UPS/power management/management consoles and half of a continent loses its servers. As for physical network media, yet to see a fiber optic cable able to break a backhoe, not the other way round. Wrong time for it but maybe the next Carrington or near miss similar event may provide bigger international mayhem that the pessimist thought ? Another 1000 years or so is best guess for a repeat so not my problem.
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