Posts by Jon 88

Little Red Hen

Dabbsy, I'm a programmer / software developer / engineer (what do those words even mean, really, other than making me sound impressive?) from the American midwest. Your column is generally my favorite one from the Register, and today's showed me that you are a master with words. I hate user interfaces because its really hard to pretend to be a non-computer-literate and also hard to admit how bad my designs are. I spent 800 hours last year building my personal program (a Dungeons and Dragons assistant) and my users were consistently unhelpful saying "come back when its useful". To sum it up, your programs live or die by your user interfaces, and your users are completely unhelpful in building it. Perhaps you know the story of the Little Red Hen? Cheers

Laying fiber is a dangerous business

A certain large internet provider in my area was laying fiber in my neighborhood. I was not their customer. But one day, they punched a hole in my sewer line. I called out the plumber who diagnosed the issue. Boy was that an interesting conversation with their help desk. Fortunately, I happened to chat with a foreman from the contractor actually doing the work, and he just took care of it, fixed my pipe, and payed my bill.

I am a developer with the FAA. I worked for a number of years on software that is used to draft approach procedures to runways. The 3 degree glideslope is absolutely normal (in fact, you have to sign a waiver to deviate from that). A 7.5NM final approach would be irregular though. A standard final approach would be only 5NM (9.26km). The most important aspect of the final approach is not the constant descent angle, but the straight path (no turns are allowed on Final). I've landed at an airport in the Philippines that had us turn around over the water so our final 5NM approach would be straight.

I would concur with your assessment that 5km range is not enough room for good planning. However, keep in mind that every approach to an airport has a plan in place for being unable to land. An airplane can simply keep going past the runway, and circle around for a second attempt at landing. A 5km detection would allow allow the plane to retain perhaps 1000ft of elevation of the runway. Not great, but better than nothing.

Another idea

Or perhaps, you should note the correlation that you don't like either the music today, or the games today, and equally so it seems. If the music is terrible, perhaps the games are too, in actuality? Perhaps all of us want better but don't have it, or don't understand what it takes to get better.

Try the latest installment... Warriors of the North

I started out with Heroes of Might and Magic III. It took a long time to get over the difficulty curve, but then the gameplay sucked me in. I especially loved one-off custom games, rather than story mode. I somehow discovered King's Bounty: Crossworlds/Armored Princess. It was good for a moment, but long and tedious. And if I wasn't careful, I ran out of troops and could not defeat enough enemies to keep my coffers fulls. So I quit. Inevitably, the thirst to play game back when I saw them release King's Bounty: Warriors of the North. The gameplay is much more refined. Try it.

Wish I could help

I actually work for said government body... but I am not part of your approvals process. Hope you can launch soon!

Orangemobile

Excuse my saying so, as I lack a proper British wit, but wouldn't "Orangemobile" be a much more appropriate, not to mention much easier to say name for the merger?