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Robotic Cannon Loses Control, Kills 9
TJ_Phazerhacki writes "A new high tech weapon system demonstrated one of the prime concerns circling smarter and smarter methods of defense last week — an Oerlikon GDF-005 cannon went wildly out of control during live fire test exercises in South Africa, killing 9. Scarily enough, this is far from the first instance of a smart weapon 'turning' on its handlers. 'Electronics engineer and defence company CEO Richard Young says he can't believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2, in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart. During the shooting trials at Armscor's Alkantpan shooting range, "I personally saw a gun go out of control several times," Young says. "They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the pol[e]s down."' The biggest concern seems to be finding the glitches in the system instead of reconsidering automated arms altogether."
Why do they use the term 0,5kg, when they could have said 500g? This is one aspect of the metric system I find hilarious. Everyone says we should use metric, because it is easier to go from a low value to a larger one, just move the decimal point and change the prefix.
Well how about using the appropriate prefix yourselves? Articles about space mention thousands or millions of kilometers. Why doesn't the auther "just move the decimal point and change the prefix"? The articles should mention megameters and gigameters. What, are those units too difficult for the whole metric-using world to comprehend? If so, than shut up about metric's supposed superiority to imperial in that regard. Because it obviously does not exist.
And at the opposite end of the scale, CPUs are described using hundredths of nanometers. e.g. Intel's 0.45nm vs. AMD's 0.90nm architecture. Switch to picometers already. You can't exactly say that picometers are too hard to visualize, but nanometers are so much easier.
Go on, mod me down. Don't matter, I'm already in the "Bad Karma" pool anyway.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
you sir are an idiot.