It'll be an interesting experiment to see how much investigative work the newspaper can get for free from the public. I compare this to the SETI@Home... see how much people are willing to donate their spare "CPU cycles" (free time) to do a bunch of drudgery work for a newspaper. Personally I think we'll be quite surprised to see the enthusiasm with which people will want to work for free just on the chance to be the one to find the golden nugget of info.
True enough, but's it's dust in a low-G environment. I've got $20 says they are gone.
(and if someone takes this bet, remembers this bet, can find this post, and I'm still alive when the rover pulls up to the spot, I'll be good for it if I lose)
I'm pretty astonished at how many people here think that footprint is still there. FOLKS, THE MOON LANDER TOOK OFF AGAIN. That expelled gas w/ a velocity which equals a temporary wind, even on an airless planet. Sorry for shouting, but that footprint is long long gone. The equipment there will still be around someplace, probably covered in dust and scattered everywhere, mostly.
That's the trouble with statistics... they are always looking backwards.
Let's say all world leaders follow statistics... terrorism is like lightning strikes, waste of money, let them rot in obscurity.
Terrorist X finally gets hold of nuclear material now that no one cares about him, builds bomb off internet instructions. Boom (x10 booms let's say)... Jerusalem, London, New York, DC, Moscow, LA, Chicago, Paris, Mumbai, and Berlin.
Now suddenly the statistics start looking a bit different.
And not chased them won't change the targets... anyone that supports Israel is a target, according to their own statements.
Well, they actually do have jurisdiction over (their) air and sea, through NORAD for the air for instance. They just normally don't exercise it, leaving things to the FAA.
To do it right, to 'deploy measures' to protect a commercial asset (be it company or public utility), the gov't agency would have to take over configuration control of the servers that hold the data, the firewall, and active directory (or whatever is in use). Just securing the perimeter doesn't cut it in a 'best practice' environment. Now imagine said company/utility wants to create a new self-pay website for their customers. Now they need to go hat in hand to the agency to ask permission for port 80 to be opened for traffic to IP 192.168.0.xxx etc etc. Whose network is it now?
Utilities will probably have more luck trying to keep critical and non-critical networks separate, but that's a lot harder for corporate networks. Especially big multi-nationals like EADS. So deploying measures sounds good upfront, but I think it would become a nightmare if tried to implement. Not to mention having some IT team show up to 'secure' your network and taking it down in the process because they don't understand it:)
This isn't a military-industrial complex conspiracy issue, nor exploiting the rest of the world.
It highlights that 'national security' of any country is much more complicated than days gone by. The 'military' can no longer guarantee security by having lots of ships and planes etc. A hacker taking out the electrical grid certainly is a threat to national security, but not a threat that can be fended off by the military.
Why not? Because as most here would know, to do that would require military 'jurisdiction' over every network node and server and firewall defending something deemed 'important'.
Since despite general cynicism on the topic, the US still is one of the most free societies on the planet, they clearly would despise such an option. So instead working together as a team makes just way too much sense.
The concerning side is valid as well... giving the same dingbats that can't secure a basic firewall the responsibility for securing -actual- classified intelligence should worry us all as well.
Of course the answer is halfway, companies need to beef up their controls and the government then needs to share. We're all in this together. And yes, in this 'new' global economy, I mean everyone, but just those pesky Americans...
Yes, while the correlation != causation is a time-honored/. tenet, the researchers here do actually clearly grasp this concept, note all the clear caveats on just the summary.
To -prove- a causation requires a correlation. You can either theorize a causation and later prove correlation (Einstein/Relativity) Or find a correlation and later construct a causation that explains it (Gravity, Why girlfriends dump guys after they show off their Battlestar Galatica action figure collection) [often requires additional specific correlation experiments to rule out other causation theories]
In this case, I think the researchers have made fair statements about their work, that it indicates a general direction to continue to look for a causation.
The biofuel tech I see with the most promise is Celloluse biofuel plants. Several are being built now in varying sizes, and they can use nearly any type of plant refuse to produce fuel. Think about the acres of land in highway strips and airports sitting unused but required to be mowed? What if all our lawn clippings turned into Ethanol? Sure, the fuel/acre is nothing compared to corn, but the organic material is already being created and wasted! To me, that is as close to 'free energy' as solar and wind (yep, still costs $$$ to build the plants, maintain them, run them, and distribute the product, just like solar/wind)
Shell didn't say they'd "never" invest in solar/wind. As oil prices rise, their interest in solar/wind/etc will rise as well, because the delta profit will be more in it's favor. The only way that's going to happen real soon is if governments make oil power so expensive (taxes or greenhouse regulations) that they change the profit curve. And the hit to the economy isn't something any country seems willing to go through right now.
My first thought would be that: Carbon Crystal = Diamond
So handmade custom 'Mobius Diamonds' could be the new rage
My second though was that Carbon Nanotube Crystal != Diamond
Diamonds are carbon crystals at the atomic level, where is sounds these crystals would be at the molecular level (molecules being bonded groups of atoms) So they probably would not share all the characteristics of diamonds. I'd be interested to see what they look like though.
IANAChemist, so I'm curious to hear from someone more qualified than I about what a nanotube crystal could be like.
If you are one of the many/. developers who have only ever worked in a coding vault and never see anyone else's cubicle, please take a walk sometime and learn what other people do for a living. Most, believe it or not, are only about as incompetent as you are.
For instance, item 12... 'a decree will come down to "Fix it".' What exactly do you really want the guy with the MBA from Harvard (or Ivy Tech) to tell you as the streaming media expert? Would you actually prefer the manager to come down as say "I want you to implement a UDP-based stream implementing an H.264 codec and using Oracle 11i cluster as a backend??". Maybe he read those words on/. or the last issue of Wired, so they most be a good solution. I'd bet then you'd complain about being boxed in by people who don't live and breathe streaming media like you do. Non-technical managers should only send non-technical guidance. Then the technical manager level take the business guidance and translate that into a technical solution, which they should then discuss with the non-techs to ensure that their tech solution has no unintended side effects. It doesn't have to be broken and twisted along the way. The key is for everyone to listen and learn from each other.
So in this case, I see nothing wrong with the MBA coming down and saying "tech team, people aren't happy with the streaming... make this your #1 priority... Fix It and tell me what you need". It's his job to figure out where to spend the $$$, making this a priority probably meant one less superbowl ad Marketing could buy. Which one makes the most customer $? That's an MBA problem. Let them worry about that while you worry about what you know, how to 'fix it'.
As was mentioned above (I tried to reply to that one but web page errors wouldn't allow) the RQ-4 does this and more.
Unlike the well known Predator UAV, the Global Hawk control panel has no joystick or similar control. It's got a keyboard and mouse. If you want it to turn left, you type/click commands to alter it's course etc.
What I think is particularly interesting is that it has a set of commands to follow if it loses communications with the humans. So if on the trip to Australia comms had been lost partway, it could have automatically diverted itself to another field etc.
The biggest issue here that remains is not technical really, it's about airspace, and the FAA trying to figure out a way that a computer can fly an aircraft in the same airspace as manned aircraft. Manned aircraft after all follow FAA controller's directions, and a computer that loses comm will not be able to. FAA approvals for current RQ-4 operations have been very limited AFAIK. There are solutions (manned aircraft lose radios too), but I'm sure no one wants to be on the commercial airliner that's part of the airspace deconfliction beta test:), so they are taking their time to make sure it's done right/safely.
People talk about the human limitations thing a lot, but it's really a lot more complicated than that. If you really study fighter combat, very rarely will a western pilot pull 9+ G's. That's because of all the energy it burns off. Fighter combat is really all about energy conservation. Slow=Dead. So you want use as little energy as possible. Once you do that 9G turn, you've used up so much energy/speed, that you are generally a sitting duck. Plus, you have to be in just the right flight envelope to pull a max effort turn (at least in an F-16). In a 1-v-1 basic dogfight, the F-22's greatest asset is it's enormous engines, because they allow the aircraft to turn faster!! Yes, because those engines can replace lost energy must faster than an F-15 or similar.
So while you might be able to pull more than 10G's consistently in a drone, the engine technology to really be able to consistently and stay in the fight is the next generation PAST the F-22. (Well, I don't have F-22 experience personally, so I can't say that with certainty, but I can say it with more certainty than most statements on/.)
The F-22/F-35 should not be compared with the Predator head to head. They were designed for different missions.
-Current- UAV designs are built for what we call persistence. The ability to be present in an area for a long time. And they are also designed primarily for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance), and weapons were frankly an afterthought that turned out to be rather effective. In an environment with complete air supremacy and where your targets are small, few in number, and fleeting, they are perfect. That's great for counter-insurgency warfare, ie today's war.
HOWEVER, not all wars will be thus waged. There are great debates around the military about when the next war will occur and what it's nature will be. The -current- generation of UAV's can't carry the big loads and avoid enemy defenses (whether ground->air or air->air). That's where our currently manned portfolio comes in.
What's key about this is that the difference has nothing to do with whether the aircraft are manned or unmanned. It's to do with their overall mission design.
So yes, a UAV F-35 could be built reasonably easily, and would be on par I believe with a manned F-35. Will we go there? Maybe.
The only arena I see certain job safety for pilots is anything that carries passengers. I don't believe any pax would board an AI-driven aircraft.
Also, in this whole discussion, don't forget the Air Force had both it's Chief of Staff (4-star) and Secretary of the Air Force (Civilian) got fired, which on the face of it was for nuclear-related issues, but in fact was about a number of other things, to include lack of support for more UAV orbits. So not surprisingly the AF has quickly gotten in line with what the SecDef wants.
This is common practice in Japan. Use the mega-pixel camera on a 2-D square barcode, and away you go!
The interesting thing is that you don't actually have to be close to use it.
While it's used for coupons, etc, (McDonald's wrappers all have these barcodes on it), I've also seen it on retail store outdoor signs, large enough to be scanned from the street as you stop at a stoplight. I haven't personally scanned one to see what happens, but I was surprised to see it.
Also, people exchange contact details via barcode. I.E. print your barcode data on your conference nametag.
Essentially it's a hyperlink you can 'click on' in the real world with your phone... 'scan me for more information', and the phone gets the code and then gets additional data from the internet. So yes, it certainly has plenty of application, though Microsoft certainly can't take the credit...
"...halted support for COBOL 108 years after the language was founded. We continue to provide support for Cybernetic Linux. We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for machines that help humans. It's just the interface that has changed. But I would be lying to say it doesn't sadden me..."
So, any bets on whether the above statement will be a reality??
Or the alternative version in 2109...
"...halted support for Windows XP 108 years after the language was founded. We continue to provide support for Windows Vista. Windows Vista is a great enhancement to the user experience, and we really really really hope that people will get over it and stop asking for XP. Really, we mean it this time, NO MORE XP SUPPORT. No... Really..."
But the earth being 6000 years old is a possible conclusion of creationism
OK, so we're going to scorn people for "possible" conclusions? That's a strech.
Therefore, a "possible" conclusion of evolution is that (as mentioned already), I can pick up a bag of watch parts and shake them long enough and they'll make a watch. Certainly that conclusion would deserve scorn as well, no?
Perhaps we want to scorn an entire group, we should at least consider the most generally accepted conclusion of that premise.
Personally, I really think we expand a lot more energy on this than we need to. Consider the following as a coder:
Goal-- Create an AI
We started by trying to hard-code human behavior. Lots and lots of code, didn't work that well.
SO, we (like most perfection-seeking programmers) refactored the code. We came up with some really cool code that could actually learn intelligent behavior (neural nets et al). But still we weren't satisfied, and want to create life with even less lines of code, something more elegant...
SO, after thousands of years and sheer genius, we come up with a couple lines of code that once running, actually write it's own code, and even debugs itself! How cool is that??
So the big bang was just a "compile and run" command. Yeah, OK, it'd never be scientifically provable or disprovable, but I'd just ask anyone who is quick to scorn or get emotional to consider there might be a middle ground out there.
I find great amusement thinking of God with the Star Wars hat and bag of Cheetos boasting to Gabriel that 6 billion years, and his code has only needed 1 service pack (for those that didn't go to Sunday School, that would be the flood and the whole Noah's Ark thing).
True, the catch is that most software 'errors' tend to be caused by unexpected inputs. For instance, horizon 1 probably receives a signal from (mechanical) gyro 1 and horizon 2 from gyro 2. So the chances of a simultaneous failure are reduced because of good old fashioned mechanical redundancy.
Airbus resolves this concern by having flight computer software "A" written by a completely independent team from the designers of flight computer software "B". Then each aircraft has both versions "A" and "B" running simultaneously. The theory is that independent designers won't create the same bug. There's obviously debate on that, as Boeing doesn't follow the same methodology.
While there's not enough detail in the article to make any real conclusions, I'm fairly certain the fault would have to be more complex than simply a single ADIRU going haywire. The autopilot worked correctly, and realized that if it was putting the aircraft in an angle of attack like that, something must be wrong with it, so disconnected itself as it should. And most similar systems I'm familiar with tend to have a capability to detect an erroneous reading, either by voting as you described, or by realizing that AoA can't change from 2 deg to 25 deg in 1/60th of a second so the input can't be right (or some similar 'common-sense' check), and faulting that component.
For those that are interested in coding/test methodologies, the FAA created a system called "DO178B" which defined as set of software assurance standards for aircraft. (Note, it's not coding standards, it's assurance standards)
It set different standards for different types of code. The movies would be Class E, a non-critical nav system maybe C or D, FCS probably A.
But even then, the code can be made modular to decrease the assurance level required. For instance, an artificial horizon needs to work, right? But you normally have more than one in a cockpit. If one goes bad, you can use the other, not catastrophic. But the key is the pilot(s) need to recognize that it's busted. What if one froze in place in flight during landing? The pilot might follow it and go ka-boom.
So by itself, an electronic artificial horizon would require level A ($$$) software so that it 'never' fails. This is very very expensive (for level A the post-compiler machine code must be analyzed for possible compiler issues, and MC/DC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Condition/Decision_Coverage coverage)
So instead, they write it to a lower level, and then create a small set of code that cross-checks everything and kills off any horizon that's malfunctioning by placing a big "X" (or whatever) on the screen instead. Lower risk and greatly reduced cost.
Slashdot Mirror
It'll be an interesting experiment to see how much investigative work the newspaper can get for free from the public.
I compare this to the SETI@Home... see how much people are willing to donate their spare "CPU cycles" (free time) to do a bunch of drudgery work for a newspaper.
Personally I think we'll be quite surprised to see the enthusiasm with which people will want to work for free just on the chance to be the one to find the golden nugget of info.
True enough, but's it's dust in a low-G environment. I've got $20 says they are gone.
(and if someone takes this bet, remembers this bet, can find this post, and I'm still alive when the rover pulls up to the spot, I'll be good for it if I lose)
I'm pretty astonished at how many people here think that footprint is still there. FOLKS, THE MOON LANDER TOOK OFF AGAIN. That expelled gas w/ a velocity which equals a temporary wind, even on an airless planet.
Sorry for shouting, but that footprint is long long gone. The equipment there will still be around someplace, probably covered in dust and scattered everywhere, mostly.
That's the trouble with statistics... they are always looking backwards.
Let's say all world leaders follow statistics... terrorism is like lightning strikes, waste of money, let them rot in obscurity.
Terrorist X finally gets hold of nuclear material now that no one cares about him, builds bomb off internet instructions. Boom (x10 booms let's say)... Jerusalem, London, New York, DC, Moscow, LA, Chicago, Paris, Mumbai, and Berlin.
Now suddenly the statistics start looking a bit different.
And not chased them won't change the targets... anyone that supports Israel is a target, according to their own statements.
Well, they actually do have jurisdiction over (their) air and sea, through NORAD for the air for instance. They just normally don't exercise it, leaving things to the FAA.
To do it right, to 'deploy measures' to protect a commercial asset (be it company or public utility), the gov't agency would have to take over configuration control of the servers that hold the data, the firewall, and active directory (or whatever is in use). Just securing the perimeter doesn't cut it in a 'best practice' environment.
Now imagine said company/utility wants to create a new self-pay website for their customers. Now they need to go hat in hand to the agency to ask permission for port 80 to be opened for traffic to IP 192.168.0.xxx etc etc. Whose network is it now?
Utilities will probably have more luck trying to keep critical and non-critical networks separate, but that's a lot harder for corporate networks. Especially big multi-nationals like EADS. :)
So deploying measures sounds good upfront, but I think it would become a nightmare if tried to implement. Not to mention having some IT team show up to 'secure' your network and taking it down in the process because they don't understand it
-edit- NOT just those pesky Americans
This isn't a military-industrial complex conspiracy issue, nor exploiting the rest of the world.
It highlights that 'national security' of any country is much more complicated than days gone by. The 'military' can no longer guarantee security by having lots of ships and planes etc. A hacker taking out the electrical grid certainly is a threat to national security, but not a threat that can be fended off by the military.
Why not? Because as most here would know, to do that would require military 'jurisdiction' over every network node and server and firewall defending something deemed 'important'.
Since despite general cynicism on the topic, the US still is one of the most free societies on the planet, they clearly would despise such an option. So instead working together as a team makes just way too much sense.
The concerning side is valid as well... giving the same dingbats that can't secure a basic firewall the responsibility for securing -actual- classified intelligence should worry us all as well.
Of course the answer is halfway, companies need to beef up their controls and the government then needs to share. We're all in this together. And yes, in this 'new' global economy, I mean everyone, but just those pesky Americans...
Yes, while the correlation != causation is a time-honored /. tenet, the researchers here do actually clearly grasp this concept, note all the clear caveats on just the summary.
To -prove- a causation requires a correlation.
You can either theorize a causation and later prove correlation (Einstein/Relativity)
Or find a correlation and later construct a causation that explains it (Gravity, Why girlfriends dump guys after they show off their Battlestar Galatica action figure collection) [often requires additional specific correlation experiments to rule out other causation theories]
In this case, I think the researchers have made fair statements about their work, that it indicates a general direction to continue to look for a causation.
I wish them luck in curing Autism!
The biofuel tech I see with the most promise is Celloluse biofuel plants.
Several are being built now in varying sizes, and they can use nearly any type of plant refuse to produce fuel.
Think about the acres of land in highway strips and airports sitting unused but required to be mowed? What if all our lawn clippings
turned into Ethanol? Sure, the fuel/acre is nothing compared to corn, but the organic material is already being created and wasted!
To me, that is as close to 'free energy' as solar and wind (yep, still costs $$$ to build the plants, maintain them, run them, and distribute the product, just like solar/wind)
Shell didn't say they'd "never" invest in solar/wind. As oil prices rise, their interest in solar/wind/etc will rise as well, because the delta profit will be more in it's favor. The only way that's going to happen real soon is if governments make oil power so expensive (taxes or greenhouse regulations) that they change the profit curve. And the hit to the economy isn't something any country seems willing to go through right now.
My first thought would be that:
Carbon Crystal = Diamond
So handmade custom 'Mobius Diamonds' could be the new rage
My second though was that
Carbon Nanotube Crystal != Diamond
Diamonds are carbon crystals at the atomic level, where is sounds these crystals would be at the molecular level (molecules being bonded groups of atoms)
So they probably would not share all the characteristics of diamonds. I'd be interested to see what they look like though.
IANAChemist, so I'm curious to hear from someone more qualified than I about what a nanotube crystal could be like.
If you are one of the many /. developers who have only ever worked in a coding vault and never see anyone else's cubicle, please take a walk sometime and learn what other people do for a living. Most, believe it or not, are only about as incompetent as you are.
For instance, item 12... 'a decree will come down to "Fix it".' What exactly do you really want the guy with the MBA from Harvard (or Ivy Tech) to tell you as the streaming media expert? Would you actually prefer the manager to come down as say "I want you to implement a UDP-based stream implementing an H.264 codec and using Oracle 11i cluster as a backend??". Maybe he read those words on /. or the last issue of Wired, so they most be a good solution. I'd bet then you'd complain about being boxed in by people who don't live and breathe streaming media like you do.
Non-technical managers should only send non-technical guidance. Then the technical manager level take the business guidance and translate that into a technical solution, which they should then discuss with the non-techs to ensure that their tech solution has no unintended side effects. It doesn't have to be broken and twisted along the way. The key is for everyone to listen and learn from each other.
So in this case, I see nothing wrong with the MBA coming down and saying "tech team, people aren't happy with the streaming... make this your #1 priority... Fix It and tell me what you need". It's his job to figure out where to spend the $$$, making this a priority probably meant one less superbowl ad Marketing could buy. Which one makes the most customer $? That's an MBA problem. Let them worry about that while you worry about what you know, how to 'fix it'.
As was mentioned above (I tried to reply to that one but web page errors wouldn't allow) the RQ-4 does this and more.
Unlike the well known Predator UAV, the Global Hawk control panel has no joystick or similar control. It's got a keyboard and mouse.
If you want it to turn left, you type/click commands to alter it's course etc.
What I think is particularly interesting is that it has a set of commands to follow if it loses communications with the humans. So if on the trip to Australia comms had been lost partway, it could have automatically diverted itself to another field etc.
The biggest issue here that remains is not technical really, it's about airspace, and the FAA trying to figure out a way that a computer can fly an aircraft in the same airspace as manned aircraft. Manned aircraft after all follow FAA controller's directions, and a computer that loses comm will not be able to. FAA approvals for current RQ-4 operations have been very limited AFAIK. There are solutions (manned aircraft lose radios too), but I'm sure no one wants to be on the commercial airliner that's part of the airspace deconfliction beta test :), so they are taking their time to make sure it's done right/safely.
People talk about the human limitations thing a lot, but it's really a lot more complicated than that. If you really study fighter combat, very rarely will a western pilot pull 9+ G's. That's because of all the energy it burns off. Fighter combat is really all about energy conservation. Slow=Dead. So you want use as little energy as possible. Once you do that 9G turn, you've used up so much energy/speed, that you are generally a sitting duck. Plus, you have to be in just the right flight envelope to pull a max effort turn (at least in an F-16). In a 1-v-1 basic dogfight, the F-22's greatest asset is it's enormous engines, because they allow the aircraft to turn faster!! Yes, because those engines can replace lost energy must faster than an F-15 or similar.
So while you might be able to pull more than 10G's consistently in a drone, the engine technology to really be able to consistently and stay in the fight is the next generation PAST the F-22. (Well, I don't have F-22 experience personally, so I can't say that with certainty, but I can say it with more certainty than most statements on /.)
The F-22/F-35 should not be compared with the Predator head to head. They were designed for different missions.
-Current- UAV designs are built for what we call persistence. The ability to be present in an area for a long time. And they are also designed primarily for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance), and weapons were frankly an afterthought that turned out to be rather effective. In an environment with complete air supremacy and where your targets are small, few in number, and fleeting, they are perfect. That's great for counter-insurgency warfare, ie today's war.
HOWEVER, not all wars will be thus waged. There are great debates around the military about when the next war will occur and what it's nature will be. The -current- generation of UAV's can't carry the big loads and avoid enemy defenses (whether ground->air or air->air). That's where our currently manned portfolio comes in.
What's key about this is that the difference has nothing to do with whether the aircraft are manned or unmanned. It's to do with their overall mission design.
So yes, a UAV F-35 could be built reasonably easily, and would be on par I believe with a manned F-35. Will we go there? Maybe.
The only arena I see certain job safety for pilots is anything that carries passengers. I don't believe any pax would board an AI-driven aircraft.
Also, in this whole discussion, don't forget the Air Force had both it's Chief of Staff (4-star) and Secretary of the Air Force (Civilian) got fired, which on the face of it was for nuclear-related issues, but in fact was about a number of other things, to include lack of support for more UAV orbits. So not surprisingly the AF has quickly gotten in line with what the SecDef wants.
This is common practice in Japan. Use the mega-pixel camera on a 2-D square barcode, and away you go!
The interesting thing is that you don't actually have to be close to use it.
While it's used for coupons, etc, (McDonald's wrappers all have these barcodes on it), I've also seen it on retail store outdoor signs, large enough to be scanned from the street as you stop at a stoplight. I haven't personally scanned one to see what happens, but I was surprised to see it.
Also, people exchange contact details via barcode. I.E. print your barcode data on your conference nametag.
Essentially it's a hyperlink you can 'click on' in the real world with your phone... 'scan me for more information', and the phone gets the code and then gets additional data from the internet. So yes, it certainly has plenty of application, though Microsoft certainly can't take the credit...
"...halted support for COBOL 108 years after the language was founded. We continue to provide support for Cybernetic Linux. We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for machines that help humans. It's just the interface that has changed. But I would be lying to say it doesn't sadden me..."
So, any bets on whether the above statement will be a reality??
Or the alternative version in 2109...
"...halted support for Windows XP 108 years after the language was founded. We continue to provide support for Windows Vista. Windows Vista is a great enhancement to the user experience, and we really really really hope that people will get over it and stop asking for XP. Really, we mean it this time, NO MORE XP SUPPORT. No... Really..."
But the earth being 6000 years old is a possible conclusion of creationism
OK, so we're going to scorn people for "possible" conclusions? That's a strech.
Therefore, a "possible" conclusion of evolution is that (as mentioned already), I can pick up a bag of watch parts and shake them long enough and they'll make a watch. Certainly that conclusion would deserve scorn as well, no?
Perhaps we want to scorn an entire group, we should at least consider the most generally accepted conclusion of that premise.
Personally, I really think we expand a lot more energy on this than we need to. Consider the following as a coder:
Goal-- Create an AI
We started by trying to hard-code human behavior. Lots and lots of code, didn't work that well.
SO, we (like most perfection-seeking programmers) refactored the code. We came up with some really cool code that could actually learn intelligent behavior (neural nets et al). But still we weren't satisfied, and want to create life with even less lines of code, something more elegant...
SO, after thousands of years and sheer genius, we come up with a couple lines of code that once running, actually write it's own code, and even debugs itself! How cool is that??
So the big bang was just a "compile and run" command. Yeah, OK, it'd never be scientifically provable or disprovable, but I'd just ask anyone who is quick to scorn or get emotional to consider there might be a middle ground out there. I find great amusement thinking of God with the Star Wars hat and bag of Cheetos boasting to Gabriel that 6 billion years, and his code has only needed 1 service pack (for those that didn't go to Sunday School, that would be the flood and the whole Noah's Ark thing).
True, the catch is that most software 'errors' tend to be caused by unexpected inputs. For instance, horizon 1 probably receives a signal from (mechanical) gyro 1 and horizon 2 from gyro 2. So the chances of a simultaneous failure are reduced because of good old fashioned mechanical redundancy. Airbus resolves this concern by having flight computer software "A" written by a completely independent team from the designers of flight computer software "B". Then each aircraft has both versions "A" and "B" running simultaneously. The theory is that independent designers won't create the same bug. There's obviously debate on that, as Boeing doesn't follow the same methodology.
You're absolutely right, they aren't standards, that's my mistake.
While there's not enough detail in the article to make any real conclusions, I'm fairly certain the fault would have to be more complex than simply a single ADIRU going haywire. The autopilot worked correctly, and realized that if it was putting the aircraft in an angle of attack like that, something must be wrong with it, so disconnected itself as it should. And most similar systems I'm familiar with tend to have a capability to detect an erroneous reading, either by voting as you described, or by realizing that AoA can't change from 2 deg to 25 deg in 1/60th of a second so the input can't be right (or some similar 'common-sense' check), and faulting that component.
For those that are interested in coding/test methodologies, the FAA created a system called "DO178B" which defined as set of software assurance standards for aircraft. (Note, it's not coding standards, it's assurance standards)
Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B
It set different standards for different types of code. The movies would be Class E, a non-critical nav system maybe C or D, FCS probably A. But even then, the code can be made modular to decrease the assurance level required. For instance, an artificial horizon needs to work, right? But you normally have more than one in a cockpit. If one goes bad, you can use the other, not catastrophic. But the key is the pilot(s) need to recognize that it's busted. What if one froze in place in flight during landing? The pilot might follow it and go ka-boom.
So by itself, an electronic artificial horizon would require level A ($$$) software so that it 'never' fails. This is very very expensive (for level A the post-compiler machine code must be analyzed for possible compiler issues, and MC/DC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Condition/Decision_Coverage coverage)
So instead, they write it to a lower level, and then create a small set of code that cross-checks everything and kills off any horizon that's malfunctioning by placing a big "X" (or whatever) on the screen instead. Lower risk and greatly reduced cost.