Posts by cortland 1167 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Mar 2012
Re the UAE being rather behind the times so far as personal rights are concerned...
I think perhaps it regards itself as the FUTURE of human rights, with Sharia and all that, not that we don't have similar controller types in the West. IMO, ours may be more polite. Or not.
I've worked (NB: on hardware, NOT in the SW group) for a firm that, among other things, has written flight control software. It's tightly regulated to prevent vulnerabilities, and requires a really horrendous* effort to verify. See http://www.adacore.com/gnatpro-safety-critical/avionics/do178b//
*Except when verification catches something.
More energy = more danger. I learned that *years ago* when a "dead" alkaline PP3 was short circuited by coins in my pocket. Didn't quite blister but it certainly energized ME.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-volt_battery
The power density of batteries is slowly catching up on gunpowder. When I built (ca 1956) an electromagnetic ball-bearing launcher, this 12 year old's version of a not yet invented "railgun", in my bedroom, I could have sent them THROUGH the wall -- if I'd used a (not invented yet) LiFePO battery instead of a Lionel train transformer.
Were my brother still living, he, born the UK while our father was stationed there, would turn in his UK passport and advise others to stay away, which is a real shame. If HM government wish to make Britain as popular as Russia, they seem on the right path.
I note that we in the US seem fair to catching up with the USSR as well.
... this is the sort of access (AND source code, please) the PRC government is now insisting American manufacturers provide for products sold there? Or that many if not most of those "American" products (and parts for all the rest) sold ** outside** the PRC are probably made in the factories that will do the dirty-work?
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