Posts by Paul Hovnanian

Re: Really?

Scenario 3 - There is not enough power available on the grid leading to a brown/black out. Your UPS discharges stored power until your batteries are depleted. Your servers go down anyway

Re: re: "a new stealth model"

"still using flash"

Many of them. Most of our license plates are retro-reflective (each state has its own plates and artwork). By taking two pics, one with ambient light and one with a flash, then subtracting one from the other, the retro-reflective field stands out much better from background noise. This makes the OCR's job easier at longer ranges. Some work in IR, so while one might not see the flash, it's still there (and on the dash cam).

Re: Cui bono

"Marx foresaw that capital would end up in fewer and fewer hands"

Let me check my stock portfolio for a sec........ Yeah, Groucho. I guess you were right.

Filed everything under 'A'.

A contract. A memo. A lawsuit .....

My mom tried to get me into drug intervention for using PHP.

Re: It would seem that 'we the people'

And the Beatles.

Re: Burning question

The issues of MTBE and tetra-ethyl-lead aside, there are effective bio-remediation techniques for ridding soil of petrochemicals. In other words; bugs that eat the stuff.

We have a waterfront part in my town that, in the distant past, was a fuel tank farm for ships. Long after the conversion to a park, plumes of petroleum products were discovered to be migrating through the ground. The part was closed, Benches and the sod was removed and the soil was tilled while adding some sort of special bacterial concoction. The soil was allowed to sit for a year with occasional additional tilling. After that time, the bugs had eaten the oil. The grass was re-planted and the park is back in operation for the entertainment of the local three-eyed sprogs.

Re: Possiblity - Boeing has simply Lost It in a general sense.

"Air Force inspectors had discovered 'foreign object debris' in the new planes"

Strange. Boeing was supposed to have adopted Toyota's Kanban system for lean manufacturing. No more mechanics grabbing a box of bolts and their own tools and haphazardly assembling stuff as they went. You have a job to install three bolts, you get a box with three bolts, plus tracking paperwork and the proper tool certified for that job. And if you don't turn the box, paper and tool back in, the job is not complete. Nobody should have extraneous parts or tools to leave rattling around in the fuselage. Perhaps the odd lunchbox or Hustler magazine. But that's about it.

Re: Who's supplying what? Who's responsible for what?

"Any design activity for the 737 MAX would have been in the USA"

Or passed through the Boeing commercial division from another contractor. You would have little way of knowing.

In the midst of the 787 battery fiasco, some of Boeing's engineering representatives were questioned about details of the charging system. "We'll get back to you on that." was a response designed to buy time while they got an engineering firm, possibly half way around the world, out of bed and on the phone for an answer.

When I left the company, the support a software system I was responsible for was contracted with a firm in India. That firm located my name in some source code comments and subcontracted with me for consulting services. When answers were needed in Seattle, a significant communications effort ensued, checking time zones and contacting someone to get answers. Similar antics ensued trying to reach me. I imagine a few eyes would have been raised in the Boeing boardroom had they known that the answer they were waiting for came from 10 miles down the road.

Re: IBM

'Whats going to happen when the lawyers get too "senior"'

This is why (in the USA at least) law firms tend to be partnerships. You can't just cut them loose without also handing them their share of the firm.

Re: I would expect a longer process for re-certification

"Unless they have moved"

Still in the same old place. The problem with these wheels is that they require a number of turns once MCAS (or some other fault) has driven the trim fully against one stop. Meanwhile, the flight crew is busy pulling back on the yoke, hoping that the elevator has sufficient control authority to overcome the horizontal stabilizer.

The benefit of a software mod that senses an AoA input disagree is that MCAS can be cut before it runs the stabilizer to full stop, making the pilot's job easier. If the patch is applied correctly, it may even be able to remove the (faulty) MCAS trim signal and obviate the need to kill the entire electric trim system (with toggle switches). Leaving the manual thumb switches operational and relieving the crew of a bunch of wheel-cranking.

The problem with any fix is that Boeing and the FAA will now have to examine every branch of the resulting fault tree. Very carefully and deliberately. And one of the fears that Boeing has: The longer you look at any system, the more bugs you might find. And fixes or modified crew procedures for each will have to be developed.

Re: Bananas

Yes. We have N bananas.

Could be they hit a buried hatch cover.

Re: Southwest's position (last November)

"Why would an airline spend money on a optional extra unless they thought it was safety critical option?"

Well, that's on Boeing. One of the selling points of derivative models is that they will be similar enough to the older versions that training and procedures manuals won't have to be changed (much). It sounds like Boeing thought they could add this stability augmentation system and have it just putter along in the background without having to bother the flight crews with the details.

SWA, for whatever reason, seems to have sprung for the additional indication (really just a software generated dial on an existing display) and some class time on what it means. Their motivation may have had nothing to do with MCAS faults, but having that additional information might have proven to be invaluable. Something about hindsight being 20-20.

Re: Would be ironic

"But from the equipment manufacturers point-of-view and the telecommunications companies points of view, this is a legal compliance issue."

Its all semantics. It might be called a National Security Letter. Or whatever the equivalent is in China. The implementations might be different, but the end effect is the same.

"Not a backdoor that nobody is aware of."

Define 'nobody'. The guy working the night shift in the data center might be aware of the guys in trenchcoats puttering around in the racks. But that Letter says he can't talk about it. So upper management might be blissfully unaware. And there's that plausible deniability for the CEO. "We have no evidence of backdoors in our system." Semantics again. Don't ask, don't tell.

Re: I don't think that will happen

"I'm sure Huawei will have an American registered subsidiary."

With a board of directors suitably populated by relatives of US legislators. Then all will be forgiven.

Re: laws of this nature need to be enacted by U.S. Congress

"But California customers deal with California ISPs"

California customers deal with California telecommunications services. The ISP (information service), where the data is hosted, could be anywhere in the world. California has not reached the status of a Russia or China yet. Where they can demand that their residents must store their data within their borders.

Re: It's Been Done

"The Fifth Element"

If the result is Leeloo, I could learn to live with that.

Re: Privacy-trampling telecoms?

"then why the *** are they so against net neutrality"

Because they stand to make a lot of money off of the information service providers for doing nothing. Telecoms can take a cut of the action from the highly profitable ones and keep the issue of selling your data at arms length.

Re: The monsters are gone now, come down!

"When the better living conditions are full of monsters or endemic disease. Somewhere in the past, something nasty arrived to decimate panda populations."

It's possible that the 'monsters' are us. Homo sapiens. A study (summarized in a recent issue of The Economist) hypothesizes that it was the spread of humans that drove pandas into marginal ecosystems. Where the only thing left to eat was bamboo.

Ancient people and their possible taste for panda meat no longer being an issue, it now appears that pandas might be able to co-exist with us, given their mellow dispositions (as demonstrated by this incident). Many animals that we neither compete with nor consume can adapt to human presence if they become acclimated to us.

Re: Remember Y2K?

Yes, I remember it. Leave it to the computing industry to shorten "Year 2000" to Y2K when that was the root of the problem in the first place.

Re: How I explain Brexit to children

"A Modest Proposal"

Re: A great job of engineering, but next time....

"get Dyson to sponsor"

I don't think any of the manufacturers in this particular line of business have any interest in furthering space exploration. After all, once we figure out how to package and ship vacuum down economically, they'll all be out of business.