Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 420 Editor's Choice: 45
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Good to see you back
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Leaving The Wire out of the Emmys (again) shows exactly how worthless these awards are. This has been the best show in the history of television from Episode 1. Maybe the Arrested Development thing got to them, but they were right to keep giving that show awards in spite of the ratings and they need to recognize this show.
Two and a Half Men is funny. It's not sophisticated, it's not politically correct, and it's not subtle. But it is hysterical. Sheen is a really good comic actor, maybe because he doesn't look like one.
Just checked out Mad Men (thanks for the tip). Good show, even though the appearance of Rosemarie DeWitt probably means that Standoff is really dead, and I liked that show a lot. I grew up during the 60's, albiet in an extremely liberal environment, but I was too young to understand the social dynamics that were in play. If this is really what things were like, the pressure to conform was beyond anything I could have imagined. It's amazing that anyone managed to get anything done, what with everyone pretending to be something they weren't. Simpler times, indeed. :)
The last couple of episodes of JFC have gotten more and more disorienting. Some of the criticisms I'm seeing are kind of unfair, but some of the people who have obviously drunk the Kool Aid are rationalizing.
The random dead guy wasn't random, he's the guy who deflowered Barry at the hotel. Mitch talked about surfing when he thought Shaun was dead because that's the lens he views everything through, and because he isn't quite as in touch with his spiritual side as he likes to think. Tina talked like that because Link offered her $1000 to tell him how good he was, so she talked like a character in a porn movie. Trying to illustrate the duality of the character, a little obviously I thought but apparently not.
Ed O'Neil is brilliant, even when his dialog is nonsensical. Gaviota is showing that he has been being wasted for years, and the scenes with him and Dickstein are some of the best parts of the show. Beaver is doing a great job, although sometimes he's working with some pretty thin material.
But -
Greyson Fletcher... why? He surfed one time, he's skateboarded twice, and he can't act at all. I mean not even a little bit. This is why God gave us stunt doubles. Kennely is actually getting better every episode, and she is one of the most likeable characters on the show. But Fletcher make Keanu Reeves look like he has range.
Rebecca DeMornay is bad and getting worse. Completely one dimensional and flat, something that often happens to actors after they are featured on Law and Order - Dick Wolf seems to have a way of beating all the talent out of everyone he meets. Look at Mariska Hargitay.
That scene in the parking lot made me feel a lot like Spiderman 3 - what the hell is this? I'm going to ride this out, but the situation with John and Cass is becoming tedious and the parking lot thing has me wondering if this is going anywhere. Here's hoping that Milch has some magic under his hat that will pull everything together and make us all go "Ah".
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Anti Skid
[Read the article: Ask the Pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The benefits of skid control systems are very real, but often over-rated in cars as well as planes. They make nearly maximum use of available traction (a professional driver can stop a car faster than your ABS system can), but they can't create traction. If the plane started hydroplaning, the skid control system would be useless until the tires regained contact with the runway - water has almost no traction at all.
There was a story in Car and Driver years ago, where the writer recounted an agonizingly long half mile skid into a jackknifed semi at 25 MPH, downhill on glare ice, in an Audi 5000 Quattro with ABS. Half a mile and he was only able to shed about 5 MPH. Skid control can only do so much.
I would expect that the lack of thrust reversers on one side of the plane would reduce the effectiveness of the thrust reversers on the other side of the plane. You have to keep it straight, the steering would be much less effective in low traction conditions, and the rest of the attitude controls on a plane become less effective as speeds decrease.
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It's not a law, it's a self fulfilling prophesy
[Read the article: The most dangerous metaphor]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And that is what the general population doesn't understand about Moore's Law.
Processing power doubles every 18 months or so because the increased processing power allows it. Faster computers give us the ability to build even faster computers.
Moore's Law doesn't apply to solar panels. Building a better solar panel doesn't make us any more capable of building an even better solar panel, aside from the lessons learned. Same with all technologies other than microprocessors, from can openers to nuclear reactors. No other technology supports its own development in this way.
Clearly, we are nearing the end of the microprocessor as we know it. There are limits, and we are approaching them. Not today, not for a few more years, but its coming. The technology can't continue to be developed forever, and the demand for more computing power isn't going to wane.
Yes, we can just stack more chips on a board, but that also has its limits. Walk into a 3,000 square foot room with 500 servers and no air conditioning and you'll see that the one thing computers do as well as moving ones and zeroes is converting coal into heat. More chips equals more heat. How much waste heat can we tolerate to keep Moore's Law going?
New technologies will arise, and just when we need them. Why? Because Intel and AMD will be the first to know when a radical change is needed (which may happen tomorrow or may have happened 2 years ago), and one of them will find the magic bullet.