Posts by ChrisC

Re: [TI & HP] were allowed into college entrance exams and various standardized tests

I think the reference to "college" entrance exams and "standardized tests" was the giveaway this was a US-centric article...

For this UKian, my weapons of choice were a Casio FX-5500L joined a few years later by a FX-6300G (I *really* wanted a graphing calculator, but couldn't bring myself to pay the asking prices for the full-size ones), both of which remain in full working order, albeit with a much reduced workload these days than they used to be subject to back in the days before you could get a decent calculator app on your phone.

I think it's more the "the user always read his Friday afternoon emails after the incident" line which is ambiguous here, and yes, I also read that wondering about the sudden regendering of the user... "his Friday afternoon emails were always read by the user..." might have been clearer, or "the user always read their..." would have simply allowed it to be interpreted in both ways, equally valid.

Re: Remove, Throw, Call

"Come the day, we STILL had people turning off machines when they went home, thus stopping the upgrade."

Don't underestimate the power of muscle memory. Even if someone has read the message, understood in exquisite detail exactly what it means and what the implications of not following it are, and has even reminded themselves just before heading home for the weekend that they really, REALLY, need to leave their PC running, it all pales into nothingness compared to just how strongly your muscle memory will take over control of your arm/hand and reach for the power button without you even realising it's happening. At least, not until a gnat's crotchet *beyond* the point of no return, which is almost always when you'll then have the "oh shit" moment and realise with crystal clarity just what you've done.

We've all done it, and no matter how much we like to kid ourselves that we're better than that, we'll all end up doing it again sooner or later, it's the unstoppable force of human nature at work.

All you can do is try to mitigate against it by trying to disrupt the muscle memory action from completing - e.g in the old days of physical power buttons, you might arrange for covers to be placed over them all so that muscle memory meets immovable obstacle allowing rational thought to kick in again and trigger the "oh shit" moment sooner rather than later, or in the days of software controlled power-downs you might quietly roll out a pre-update that disables the power down process, and then (just to cover the possibility that the user is also a complete muppet) you ALSO stick a cover over the plug so they can't try powering-down from the wall instead once their initial muscle memory action has been thwarted.

Re: "Malicious software removal tool"

The behaviour that particularly annoys me about Windows these days, in keeping with the theme of this article, is the utterly ludicrous way Office 365 deals with updates - namely the way it seems to think that, just because you've stopped interacting with an Office app for a split second, that's enough of an indication that you'll be happy to then see it suddenly and without any warning disappear from view, with no indications as to *why* it's disappeared, no helpful messages to let you know why trying to manually reload it isn't working, and no post-restart apology for completely derailing your earlier train of thought as you try to resume working again.

Seriously MS, would it really be too much to give us even a "hey, we need to update your copy of Word/Outlook/etc, so we're gonna close it down in 60 seconds" warning that can't be overridden but at least lets us know what's about to happen rather than hitting us with it totally out of the blue, let alone a "hey, we need to update your copy of Word/Outlook/etc, please shut it down at your earliest possible convenience so this can be done" prompt that leaves US in control of OUR systems?

Re: 64-bit port

"File types that do not depend on file-name extensions"

The Amiga had IFF (Interchange File Format) 2 years before Arthur was released - whilst many people just associate IFF as a format for storing bitmap images (because by and large that'll have been the most likely/only contact they had with IFF files) as the name suggests it was a generic format for storing any type of data within a file and allowing the OS or handling application to determine what the format was based on the header data within the file.

Not to take anything away from the immense achievement that the Archimedes was as a complete system mind - to this day I still remember the first time I saw one, after going round to my best friends house following him phoning me up to say he'd upgraded from his old BBC Model B and did I want to come round to see the new computer... Little did I know what I'd be experiencing when I arrived - having spent 4 years immersed in the world of 8-bit home computers using his Beeb and my 48k Spectrum, and reading about these weird other things (C64s, Dragons, Orics etc.) in the magazines, to suddenly come face to face with an Archie. Mind blowing. After that I was desperate to upgrade my own setup, resulting in an Amiga 500 landing on my desk about a year later, which was equally mind blowing.

I'm immensely thankful I was around to live through those epic early years of the home computing revolution, all the way through to the late 90's and the introduction of 3D accelerators. However these days I'm conseqently rather less impressed with newer developments in home computer tech, as it feels like we've swapped genuinely innovative approaches with a more btute force means of bringing in improvements - every year we get ever faster CPUs and GPUs, but essentially the PC that's sat in front of me today is barely any different from the first one I built 25 years ago. And the less said about how much of that power is sucked out of the system through badly performing software, including the OS itself (apologies to Linux etc. users here, my perspective on PCs remains firmly rooted in the Windows world here for various reasons) the better - when you think back to that period in the mid-late 80's when things like the Amiga and Archimedes were launched, and consider just how much performance they were able to wring out of hardware that today wouldn't even register as a flicker on the graph of total processing power within a system, it's utterly depressing to realise where we could be today if the same level of performance for software vs the underlying hardware had been maintained throughout.

Sigh, time to crawl back into my old grumpy man cave methinks...

Re: Hudson, we have a problem

Assuming there's nothing wrong with the aircraft and it's only the pilots who've been incapacitated - which is fairly fundamental to this discussion given that this is exactly the sort of scenario that Dragonfly is being developed to assist with - then the window of opportunity for incapacitation of the entire flight crew to occur at a time when the aircraft was physically incapable of reaching any suitable runway is tiny, absolutely microscopic, in comparison to the window of opportunity for incapacitation of the entire flight crew to occur at any one of the myriad of other times during the flight when the aircraft WOULD be able to land safely if only it had some way of doing so itself in the absence of any inputs from the flight deck...

So yes, it is possible to concoct some nightmare scenario from which Dragonfly wouldn't be able to save the day, but it's possible to concoct far more, and far more likely, scenarios in which it very much would.

Re: Sanity check

Quite, and reading through several of the other comments so far it feels like this is a rather pertinent point that's being missed/ignored.

It's also worth remembering that Airbus have had a long history of inserting automation/computing elements inbetween the pilot and the control surfaces thanks to their early adoption of fly by wire, so their design ethos is already grounded in such ideas - as you say, Airbus aren't stupid, and between them or Boeing I know which one of the two I'd consider most likely to make a system like this work...

Re: This system will work perfectly...

Rely on the skill and experience of the pilots who'd still be onboard, just as you'd do today in that same scenario...

Re: Hudson, we have a problem

Apples and Orangutans... Dragonfly is being proposed as a backup in the event of *pilot* incapacitation, whilst the Hudson was an example of *aircraft* incapacitation, where reaching an actual runway via a sensible emergency flightpath wasn't an option. For Dragonfly to need to participate in the latter type scenario you'd already be in the former type scenario, at which point you really are in a spot of bother...

Re: Seventh time lucky, maybe

Is there some info available to confirm your opening statement there? Only, comparing the estimated mass of the rocket against the known payload carrying capabilities of a 747-400 doesn't suggest any need for Cosmic Girl to have gone on a weight-saving exercise just in order to get off the ground carrying the rocket. I'd hazard a guess that reducing fuel consumption and improving the climb performance during the release phase of the mission are more likely to have been the reason behind it if indeed it was done specifically for these Virgin Orbit flights.

However, bearing in mind that this airframe was originally in use at Virgin Galactic as part of its operations, it may well have been that the cabin had been stripped out for reasons related to those flights, and it was simply transferred over to Virgin Orbit in that state.

OTOH, it's equally likely that the cabin had been stripped as soon as the aircraft was transferred out of the Virgin Atlantic fleet, because if you know you're no longer going to be lugging 500+ passengers around on each flight, then why wouldn't you make use of the remaining value in the cabin fittings by transferring them back into the Virgin Atlantic engineering spares stock, or by selling them onto the general spares market, rather than just leaving them in-situ to gather dust?

Re: "a strong desire to reduce refueling costs"

Note that we're only talking about stringing a standard mains cable across the pavement to the car for slow-charging, so the same safety requirements apply as for powering a block heater. There are other issues as noted earlier which may prevent it from being possible, but this isn't one of them.

Re: The sticker price ...

Well, I didn't want to presume to speak for the whole world, so my post may have been a touch UK-centric ;-)

Re: The sticker price ...

Not so fast there, if you want your shiny new Muskmobile to have the ability to become sentient, you need to spaff an extra 6.8k to add all the bits the car needs to provide Full Self-Driving Capability* right now...

* Terms and conditions apply, actual behaviour may not match expectations, vehicle must remain under control of a human driver at all times, not really self driving at all, it's all just marketing crap, if you pay for this then you've more money than sense.

Re: "a strong desire to reduce refueling costs"

Some EV drivers already do that here too, but they still have to be in the position of being able to park their car as near as damnit directly outside their house and on the same side of the road, which isn't a given.

Re-read what they actually wrote before declaring incredulity at what you *think* they were saying...

They're saying that, in order to guarantee enough range for their needs when the battery has been given 10 years of use and abuse, AND when the weather conditions mean that the battery performance will be reduced further still and also that the car will be using more power than usual for stuff like heating and lighting, AND when it's also using more power to move itself along the road due to the extra drag from the bike rack, the car would most likely need to have a guaranteed range of 350-400 miles with a factory-fresh battery under more normal driving conditions.

Re: The sticker price ...

£48490 for a base spec Model 3, vs £39640 for a base spec 3 Series after including the parking camera upgrade which seems to be the only significant difference (*) in the base spec between the two cars aside from acceleration, and no amount of throwing options at the BMW will make it equivalent there.

So 9k cheaper for what, realistically, IS the equivalent car, but which also manages to look rather nicer both inside and out, even with the rather overly modern for my tastes interior styling BMW have now adopted. I dunno about you, but that doesn't make them around the same price in my eyes.

* the Tesla website REALLY doesn't go out of its way to actually give prospective buyers much in the way of "this is what you're getting for your money" information, so I'll readily accept I might be missing other stuff you get "for free" with the Model 3 over the 3 Series, though I doubt I've managed to overlook an extra nine grands-worth...

Re: "a strong desire to reduce refueling costs"

Sorry, but I'm going to have to assume there's a rather significant point missing from this anecdote, because otherwise the figures just don't stack up.

"3 years ago" puts us into late 2019/very early 2020 territory, so all the costs are based around the historical data from then, and I'm being a bit pessimistic for the ICE costs and a bit optimistic for the EV costs, to account for any regional variations in diesel/electricity pricing which particularly favoured your colleague over you.

So, with that, I'm assuming 137p/litre for diesel, and 5p/kWh for offpeak electricity. You've noted your car got 56mpg, and a gen.1 Leaf would manage around 4.54 miles/kWh in ideal conditions.

Thus, your per-mile costs were 11.1p, vs your colleagues costs of 1.1p, so 10x lower.

Which, whilst being a rather agreeable saving/mile, is still almost half as good as it would have to be (18x) for your monthly costs to equal their 12-monthly costs for 1.5x the distance...

Granted, without knowing exactly what each of you were paying for diesel and leccy, and even taking the aforementioned pessimistic/optimistic assumptions into account, there's still some scope to massage the figures a bit more in their favour. Just not that much more.

So either the figure they told you wasn't a based on a like-for-like comparison of your commuting needs (e.g. if they spent fewer days than you in the office), or they were getting their electricity particularly cheaply (e.g. if they were in the fortunate position of having at-home solar with sufficient capacity to cover at least half the needs of their car, which is definitely not a given for the average EV owner), or they were simply pulling your leg. I really can't see any other way to make the figures work.

Re: "a strong desire to reduce refueling costs"

Ouch. I thought it was getting stupid enough just needing to have 3-4 parking apps installed to cover the various options there, I can't even begin to fathom the lack of joined up thinking within the EV charging industry that would result in needing that many apps to cover the options here.

It's anecdotes like this which further help explain the reluctance of so many to make the switch right now - as someone else noted, the life of an EV driver today isn't that dissimilar to the life of an ICE driver back in the early days of motoring in terms of early adopter issues. The big difference is that, back then if you wanted a car then you had no choice but to accept those issues, whereas today there is a choice...

Re: The sticker price ...

I think you're missing the point of the opening line in Jake's post - there they're listing the reasons why EVs may be considered the less desirable option when someone in general is considering what car to buy next. In contrast, your anecdote is based on the experiences of people who've clearly already decided that EVs DO make sense for them. so it should come as no surprise at all to hear that they don't agree with those reasons...

Personally I do like the idea of EVs and other alternatively fuelled vehicles, and given the way our beloved overlord in London is behaving, if he manages to secure another term as mayor then it's likely he'll start ratcheting down even harder on ICE vehicle usage to the point where (as someone else mentioned earlier) EVs and other zero emissions vehicles become the only viable option for those of us who have to drive within the area, so I reckon it's only a matter of time before my hand is forced anyway.

Except that, right now, my next car won't be an EV, because...

a) the only affordable ones on the second hand market aren't even remotely comparable to the size/build quality/performance/features I can get for the same money by opting for something with an ICE up front. Given the length of my daily commute, and the lack of charge points at work, I *need* a vehicle that's guaranteed to give me at least 50 miles range in all conditions, which instantly rules out a sizeable chunk of the affordable cars even if I was prepared to forgo all the other things I look for in a car. And that's on the presumption that the OH will always own a car which can handle longer distance journeys with 2 adults and 2 teenagers, otherwise I'd be looking for something capable of at least 160 miles in such conditions, at which point I'm priced out of the EV market entirely right now.

b) even if I could stretch to the purchase price of an EV that's comparable to those ICE cars by offsetting the upfront costs against the longer term savings on running costs, the insurance costs on such higher spec EVs are then sometimes ludicrous in comparison to the cost of insuring the equivalent ICE car, which further restricts the options to those vehicles which insurers are actually willing to insure at reasonable prices.

c) there still isn't enough choice from those mainstream manufacturers who I'd happily consider for ICE vehicles, and as much as I admire some of the engineering that goes into cars from companies wholly focussed on EVs, their relative inexperience when it comes to designing the complete package (cabin layouts, exterior styling etc - i.e. all the stuff that isn't EV specific) often leaves me less than impressed with their cars overall. If I'm going to spend what to me is a not insignificant chunk of cash on a car, I really don't want to be left going "WTF was I thinking???" every time I look at it or drive it.

Give it another few generations of EVs trickling down through the used car market, and of more models becoming available from manufacturers who understand how to build cars as opposed to EV drivetrains wrapped in something that looks/behaves a bit like a car, and we might be at a point where I can make the switch from ICE to EV. But right now, for me and the thousands of other drivers like me, making the switch now would at the very least require us to accept a fairly significant downgrade in our travel experiences/abilities, or stretching ourselves financially further than would be comfortable/sensible/viable.

Re: Capable of driving a car as well as a human?

"Exactly. And that's something the "the cars behind we're just too close" crowd are ignoring"

Not really. Keeping an eye on what traffic is doing further up the road can give you early warning of an emerging scenario, but that doesn't mean you can just assume the vehicle immediately ahead of you won't still end up needing to do something that isn't predictable based on that advance observation.

Ultimately, what's happening further up the road may have some bearing on what the traffic immediately around you ends up doing, but seeing a free flowing road all the way off to the horizon doesn't give you a free pass to get right up the arse of the vehicle in front just because you can't see anything which ought to cause them to suddenly throw out the anchors.

I still remember vividly driving home on the motorway, in good visibility and relatively light traffic level. Everyone was making good steady progress with nothing visible ahead to suggest any need to even start easing off a little, let alone the need to go full on emergency stop.

And then the car ahead of me suddenly, literally in the blink of an eye, disappeared in a thick cloud of oil smoke as it's engine decided to nuke itself. I genuinely have no idea how quickly that car slowed down, because for the first few seconds I couldn't see anything. I do however know how quickly my car slowed down, because outside of my driving test that was the first time I'd ever done a full on, pedal to the floor and keep pushing, emergency stop.

Did the vehicles behind me have any inkling I was about to do that, based on either the manner of my own driving or that of the vehicles ahead of me in the time up to the point where the other cars engine let go? Nope. And yet I came out of that incident unscathed, which is entirely due to the vehicle behind me keeping a safe distance to *my* car regardless of how good things looked further up the road immediately prior to that other cars engine letting go.

"then you are mentally evaluating that "the other drivers are going to continue more or less as they are""

Are *probably* going to, but still always be prepared to deal with them doing something completely different...

Re: Hmmmmmmm

Yes, the vehicle/driver in front might be found liable depending why they suddenly slowed, but that doesn't give the following vehicles/drivers a get out of jail free card - regardless of why the first vehicle slowed, if another vehicle rams it up the arse then that's entirely on the driver of that second vehicle for not leaving enough space to respond safely.

Re: I'm appalled

"If I put a tracker in your car / bike, you can always walk, right?"

If you put a tracker on my car then I'll be passing your details onto the police... If you put a tracker on a car belonging to certain other individuals, they might decide to deal with you via other means, which you'd find even less agreeable than being arrested and slung in a cell awaiting trial.

You're missing the fundamental point. Civilian aircraft are required to broadcast this information, private road vehicles are not.

The argument over whether flight tracking information ought to be restricted for airline/ATC use only is a seperate one - right now that information IS available to anyone who wants it, and thus anyone who today boards a civil aircraft should be well aware that anyone anywhere in the world would be able to track that flight unless it happens to be flying around those parts of the world where ADSB coverage is limited.

Conversely, anyone who today gets into their personal car, or onto their personal bike, has every reason to presume that the only people able to track their journey are law enforcement and other similarly positioned government agencies. Fred Bloggs, sat in front of his PC? Nope, not unless he's hacked into the systems of those agencies, in which case see above for the expected outcome once detected.

Re: Oh boy

Not quite yourself, because dual-role cruise missiles have been used in the conventional role at times when that specific type of missile could also have been nuclear-armed...

e.g. around 86% of the 2000+ Tomahawks launched in anger to date were used during the time period when it had dual-role capability, without provoking any concerns.

Also note that nuclear capable cruise missiles are still in active service around the world today, so re-read my previous comment whilst remembering that "cruise missile" is a generic term not intended to invoke thoughts of any specific version, and that someone on the receiving end of a cruise missile attack may not be able to determine exactly which type of missile is inbound, when considering why I used them as a compare and contrast example earlier.

Re: Oh boy

"We could already deploy multi ton conventional warheads in that timeframe by refitting ICBM's. Why hasn't that been done? Consider it a moment."

Because ICBMs have *only* ever been developed with the purpose of delivering a physics package/bucket of instant sunshine/[other colloquialisms are available, see front desk for details], so anyone trying to retrofit one with a conventional warhead now would be insane - the only way to prevent your target from responding as if you were abouit to nuke them would be to warn them in advance that the missile you're about to lob in their direction genuinely, honestly, pinky promise, is "only" carrying a conventional warhead, and even then there's a fairly decent chance they'll just assume you're lying through your teeth in order to avoid receiving the retribution you'd so richly deserve for nuking someone, and response accordingly anyway...

Compare and contrast with the way cruise missile launches are perceived - whilst they *can* carry nuclear payloads, that wasn't their *sole* purpose for existing, and consequently rather less fuss is made by a defender on seeing a swarm of such weapons heading their way - you still don't know for certain that the inbound missiles are or aren't nukes, but the balance of probabilities tells you that (barring a war scenario where things have become *really* heated and you genuinely are expecting your attacker to throw anything and everything at you, no holds barred) they won't be and therefore there's no need to respond in kind.

Re: From a different era

Your flight may have been uneventful, but that doesn't make it a decent bird. When looking into who to fly with earlier this year, part of the process was seeing if any of the airlines under consideration had any of the wretched things in their fleets, as that would have earned them instant exclusion...

You didn't always need privilege to get to climb the stairs... My first encounter with a 747 was flying Cathay Pacific fron London to Hong Kong in the mid 80's, and Cathay had decided for some reason to make use of the upper deck as a rather exclusive feeling cabin for non-smoking cattle class passengers. So there I am, first time on a 747, heading upstairs into a rather cosy 3+3 layout cabin more akin to a regional airliner than the Queen of the Skies. Being sat so far ahead of the wings, it made for one of the quietest flights I've ever been on, and the unrestricted views out the window made the approach into Kai Tak even more memorable than it would usually be. Not a bad way to spend your 13th birthday...

My second encounter was on the way home a month later courtesy of Singapore Airlines. No upper deck experience this time around sadly, and having to slum it again at the back end of the plane with the rest of the cattle wasn't nearly as pleasant an experience despite the quality of the in-flight service (ah yes, the good old days of commercial aviation where it wasn't a race to the bottom to trim costs everywhere, and where even economy passengers were treated with a bit of respect), though being in such a large plane whos main cabin seemed to stretch out forever in all directions was still very much a thrill compared to bumbling around Europe on short haul 737 and 146 operated flights.

Since then though, each subsequent encounter has been a spiral downhill - the tired old cargo jumbo that had been partially refitted for passenger use and pressed into service by the charter airline that got us to and from Florida one summer was a particular "delight", and my last flights on the big old bird were on some equally tired British Airways examples to and from Australia about 20 years ago.

I'm pleased I got to experience it back in a time when it was still a relatively new design and in some cases not long out of the factory, and also at a time when commercial aviation was still something of a luxury, because those first couple of flights were genuinely special and gave me a better appreciation for what sort of an impact the 747 would have had when it was first introduced, than had all of my experiences been with those later flights.