Microsoft WE-SYP?

The Microsoft "We Share Your Pain" video. I think that this is a fake...

http://a3.v14853d.c14853.g.vm.akamaistream.net/5/3/14853/v003/
1a1a1a72db3eb01f920167db4fb41745a9188ffd69d8399dcb2c97f865c6 2f5dc02f9ccbfc30689dd0ff6cdf44bc2c5bc83ba01888b7fc356ea7e0/
9999_w.asf

Hat tip to Gary Stein

Air-drop Programming

Back in 1992 or so, in a desperate effort to convey to prospective employers just what it is I do well, I came up with the term "Air-drop Programming". The idea is you get parachuted into the middle of a code base, then fight your way out until the problems are fixed. It implies a total effort at dealing with the unfamiliar, without timidity. It really describes much of the maintenance programming experience, just not as boring.

I haven't been shy about using the term, but it never really caught on. I used it recently at OOPSLA and it looks like it was noticed! And some othe bloggers have picked it up as well Cool!

Estimating passengers

Via Danny Ayers and David Weinberger , Julian Bond asks how many people are flying on airplanes at any point in time. He figures a million, a commenter gets 750,000, Danny figures 50,000 +/- an order of magnitude. Nobody shows their reasoning, making it impossible to converge on a decent answer as nobody can check each others work. So here is my answer out in the open.

Let's just consider 747 passengers. There are roughly 1,000 passenger 747s, with an average passenger capacity of 500 passengers each. That's 500,000 right there. Most of them are flying at any given point in time as the economics of airlines doesn't permit them to keep their valuable resources sitting on the ground. Subtract some percentage for flights not being full (International fill rate averages 71%, see below) and call it 25% on the ground. This gives 266,250 passengers in the air on 747s at a time. Multiply by an off the top of my head estimate of 3 (all other airplane types) to gives total filled airplane seats of around 800,000.

Looking at it another way with the FAA stats (US domestic for May 2005), there were 56e6 passengers on US airlines domestic flights only in May. Divide by 31 to give us 1.8e6 passengers/day. Assuming the number of US flights matches the rest of the world, that's 3.6e6 passengers/day. (This is probably low as China has lots of flights these days.) I can't seem to find flight duration information, so lets assume an average of 3 hours. That gives us 450,000 as the average instantaneous value.

Unfortunately IATA sells it's statistics, so we can't get much from them (unless someone wants to give me USD 800), but it appears the load factor in international flights is about 71%.

So it looks like 500,000 +/- an order of magnitude. (50 thousand to 5 million) But if I'm wrong we'll all know where I miscalculated.

Technorati Tags: OrderOfMagnitudeQuiz

Song of the Day, September 13, 2003

Well I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed

That I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed

I ain't ready for the altar but I do agree there's times

When a woman sure can be a friend of mine

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, Sister Golden Hair surprise

And I just can't live without you; can't you see it in my eyes?

I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find

But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?

Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?

Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, Sister Golden Hair surprise

And I just can't live without you; can't you see it in my eyes?

Now I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find

But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?

Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?

Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it

Doo wop doo wop ...

- America "Sister Golden Hair" Hearts

And they called me Mad!

This is what I was worried about on January 1st, 2000. An unknown single point failure leading to a massive cascading blackout. The good news is that the system upgrades put in place for Y2K seem to have worked and protected the system from eating itself.

Den Beste has a good article on the restart problems. The only thing I'd have to add to it is that there is also a problem with unexpected current flows. I spen a bunch of time in the early nineties working with the provincial power utility (B. C. Hydro) doing a system to manage maintenance issues. One of the things I learned about the power transmission system is that the current doesn't necessarily flow down the transmission lines that you would expect. It follows the path of least resistance (sort of, AC current is more complex than that) and in a sufficiently complex transmission grid you don't know where that is. You can however figure it out using a computer and lots of linear equations.

In the old pre-computer days the grid was designed simply and inefficiently so you did know what would happen, but with modern computer control systems, competitive power sales, and long distance power wheeling they've let it become complex enough to give them suprises. Suprises like all the current going from B.C. to California routing through 1 set of wires, instead of the several sets that do exist, resulting in the protection system taking all of the wires offline in a cascading failure.

As long as the control computers are online it won't matter much in this case, but it's just one more thing you have to pay attention to when doing a grid restart.

Another item of interest is that apparantly several nuc plants tripped offline. I'm not sure how far offline that is, but in the worst case it can take weeks to restart them, operating by the book.

Is this thing on?

check check check check

check this out / here we are here we are (on a world tour!)

watching the world turn / feeling our ears burn / check this out

we'll buckle your seats / slam you to the concert chair

we'll hand out 3-D glasses / and all the aspirins we can spare

you better check your exits clear / check

no compromise no deal

you better bet / what you hear is what you hear / check check

check check check / check this out

- Max Webster "Check" Univeral Juveniles