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The Big Technical Mistakes of History
An anonymous reader tips a PC Authority review of some of the biggest technical goofs of all time. "As any computer programmer will tell you, some of the most confusing and complex issues can stem from the simplest of errors. This article looking back at history's big technical mistakes includes some interesting trivia, such as NASA's failure to convert measurements to metric, resulting in the Mars Climate Orbiter being torn apart by the Martian atmosphere. Then there is the infamous Intel Pentium floating point fiasco, which cost the company $450m in direct costs, a battering on the world's stock exchanges, and a huge black mark on its reputation. Also on the list is Iridium, the global satellite phone network that promised to make phones work anywhere on the planet, but required 77 satellites to be launched into space."
Not one in a million years would that happen to NASA. Using different measurement systems yields totally different results, and it should have been obvious right from step 1.
Something else happened, someone made an error too silly to let it out and they chosen the measurement units excuse to cover it up.
... not forcing AT&T to sell us the telegraph and telephone wires and make them a contractor for the publicly owned network. Because of that mistake we can never have true network neutrality.