The problem is patents on intangible things that were not until recently patentable like software and processes. I don't think patents on tangible inventions were used as weapons nearly as often. Now, it's not possible to write software and be confident you haven't unwittingly infringed someone's patent.
It's common sense for the police to treat the man as if he's lying. If the police assume he's telling the truth they risk putting a child in danger (and failing in their duty to protect the innocent) but if they assume he's lying then they can take measures.
That is not common sense. It's certainly not protecting the innocent. Rather, it's yet another recent example of authorities ignoring the essential principle of the presumption of innocence.
"Because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, a business model based on willful ignorance and scamming people."
which happens to be a business model that works, unfortunately
Don't forget who's pushing this. They're the same people who have convinced millions that bricks with mutilated fruit on them are worth twice as much as other bricks.
As soon as commercial recordings start using all 16 bits of depth available in CD, MP3, Vorbis or FLAC, I'll start caring about higher sample depths. Most recordings are so compressed they might as well be 8 bit.
You clearly didn't read TFA. It explains in excruciating detail why recording sample rates above 48 kHz are irrelevant with modern equipment that does high quality oversampling transparently. More importantly, unless you can prove your 96 kHz recordings sound better than the same ones downsampled to 48 kHz with a double blind test, your opinion is worthless because of confirmation bias. The 96 kHz recording sounds better to you simply because you expect it to. You might as well argue that a $400 two-way speaker sounds better than others because it's made out of wood from a whiskey barrel.
The "test servers" you mention could be any number of hops away, so I wouldn't consider them a reliable way to test latency. I always test latency by pinging my ISP's closest router pointed to by my default route. For me, anything over 20ms would be unacceptable. I am usually able to find game servers at around 50ms.
I read TFA. Yes, I know - I must be new here, etc.
Let me save you time. It's the usual self-congratulating corporatespeak. Basically, they discovered it's a good idea to have a good fit between Google and the acquired startup, and a bunch of other common sense "rules" anyone with half a brain could come up with.
What you may be missing is that unlike most corporate executives, Googles' brains don't seem to have melted and drifted down or dribbled out their ears yet.
Re:I like both forms, but printed is still best
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The eBook Backlash
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· Score: 2
There's nothing wrong with preferring printed books and I'm sure most people will for some time. There is something wrong with attacking a technology as "damaging society" just because you don't understand it and don't like to use it personally as Franzen has done.
Re:Tablet... Is Not An Ebook Reader...
on
The eBook Backlash
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· Score: 1
That's it.
Don't use iPad for reading.
Or just turn off the network connections on the tablet while reading, as Franzen said he does when writing.
I have adopted a hybrid approach. Like you, I usually wait until I can get an older game at a significant discount since the quality of a game has little to do with whether it was released in the last year. However, there are some which I'm willing to pay full price to get as soon as possible.
Although I hate DRM in principle, Steam is the least problematic DRM system I've encountered. In my experience, Steam has not generally interfered with what I want to do with games and the automatic updates are convenient. It has not prevented me from heavily modifying a number of games it manages. The one thing it makes impossible or very inconvenient is to transfer a copy of a game to someone else. Most of the games I've obtained using Steam have been heavily discounted compared to the full retail price either because they're part of a bundle or several years old so the tradeoff has been worth it for me so far.
Indeed, traditional ideas of property and copyright are no longer sufficient. I think the solution for code is that it should all be released as Free and Open Source at the same time a game or other product or service using the code is released or made available to the public. That allows for service models without the downsides for users. I'm far more likely to pay for a service if I know that I'm not locked into the one provider by their proprietary server and/or client software. If all services were like that, the market would be much more competitive than it is now since anyone can start a directly competing service at any time and customers aren't locked in.
However, that only partly solves the problem when there's a significant amount of the software that's not code, as is the case with games. Perhaps the non-code parts of games should continue to be covered by ordinary copyright with simple proprietary licenses. If you pay for a copy of the game, you are given permission to use art, map designs, music and other non-code parts on your machine. That permission would be separate from use of any services while playing the game.
Of course, this scenario is extremely unlikely since established game designers and publishers like the proprietary advantages they currently enjoy. They don't want a world in which they have to compete on quality of game design and service alone.
The game itself should always be classified as a "good", and should be able to be used in some form or another on it's own.
Connection to a server in order to play with others, however, is a service.
So, where does that leave multiplayer only games? It makes sense to consider a multiplayer game than can connect to a server run by anyone a good. For example, most of the Valve engine based games like Counter Strike seem to be this way. However, for many multiplayer games, each player only has a client and the server functionality is never released in any form. Most MMORPGs are this way as well as many games of other genres. Does it make sense to consider the World of Warcraft client a good when it's utterly useless without the service?
This move should be vindicated in the near future. But I do have some qualms:
- Appreciating data-types, their limitations and the perils of using casting them incorrectly helped me a lot in understanding about things I need to be careful about
- Are they going skip the concept of Pointers ? It's not wise to use them unless necessary but to be aware of the concept was very rewarding for me
- How will they teach multi-threaded programming? We're not quite there yet in JS.... (insert other features here)
If they switch to another language to teach stuff which JS doesn't support, they might lose their audience and so blind side a large set of them.
Javascript does have types. Don't confuse dynamic typing with typelessness. None of the other things is essential to learning the basics of programming. Both pointers are threads are powerful but low-level tools which beginning students don't need to tackle. Most high level programming using modern languages doesn't need to be concerned with pointers at all any more. Unfortunately, we don't yet have good high level abstractions for dealing with concurrency and most threading models are often more trouble than they're worth.
When a sufficiently advanced class needed to teach the concepts of pointers and threads, it could use C or C++. Starting with Javascript wouldn't hurt that class. In fact, the more languages a student is exposed to while learning, the less limited his thinking will be in general.
Though the bomber described in TFA could certainly be used in the way you describe, I expect the UAVs already in service or soon to go into service to be even better suited for that role. I'm far more concerned about thousands of small surveillance and/or strike drones than a few tens of B1 or B2-sized planes. This new bomber will be far too expensive to build and operate in large numbers whether they're flown with humans aboard or not while small UAVs already cost tiny fractions of traditional strike aircraft to build and operate.
I too would be more worried about smaller autonomous strike drones. Currently, I'm only aware of armed autonomous drones of the size of a small fighter plane or larger. I'm sure much smaller armed autonomous drones aren't far off, however.
We're just about at the point technologically where some of the science-fiction dystopian-themed "killer drone" tech from movies and novels is becoming not only possible, but economical.
Considering the ever-more totalitarian/authoritarian direction that the US and other Western governments are going, this worries me.
Strat
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator carries 2 Hellfire air to ground missiles and is much smaller than any figher plane in use today. Its maximum takeoff weight is only 1,020 kg compared to 19,200 kg for an F-16. It has a 115 HP engine and cruises at 81-103 MPH for 24 hours at a time. That means that it can wait for an ideal time to strike while a fighter would run out of fuel. It will also be far harder to detect for an ordinary observer due its small size, quiet engine and slow speed.
Of course, there have been weapons systems that have had a minimal enough chain of humans with the ability to know the actual targets, etc. However, the systems of the past were for the most part things like nuclear missiles, which are very wide-area, total-destruction, extremely "blunt instruments" not ideally-suited to domestic rebellions/uprisings/civil wars.
This would provide, among other things, an extremely-enhanced ability to keep lower ranks "out of the loop" while also being capable of a much more precise and "surgical" strike capability. This is much better suited to suppressing rebellions and uprisings while maintaining some level of deny-ability, particularly in the early stages, than missiles and other older weapons systems.
Strat
Though the bomber described in TFA could certainly be used in the way you describe, I expect the UAVs already in service or soon to go into service to be even better suited for that role. I'm far more concerned about thousands of small surveillance and/or strike drones than a few tens of B1 or B2-sized planes. This new bomber will be far too expensive to build and operate in large numbers whether they're flown with humans aboard or not while small UAVs already cost tiny fractions of traditional strike aircraft to build and operate.
I don't have nearly enough information to judge the overall cost effectiveness of every scenario. What I do know is that the US Air Force has never used a passenger or cargo design as a heavy bomber, though the Boeing did develop passenger and/or freight planes from its B-17 and B-29 bombers. In both cases, the fuselages were greatly enlarged since passengers and normal cargo is far less dense than bombs.
When considering the choice of a potential existing design to adapt into a bomber, you have to consider much more than the basic technical capabilities. Boeing, the manufacturer of the B-52 and the only remaining American company manufacturing large passenger and cargo aircraft has been been making a radical transition to global outsourcing in recent years. I doubt the USAF is likely to buy any bombers with major parts manufactured in Japan, Korea, India and France as the 787 is. They are even less likely to buy bombers from Airbus or Tupolev.
Whether for good reasons or bad, the USAF is very unlikely to adapt a passenger or cargo plane to be a heavy bomber. They are very likely to continue using the B-52 for decades. The B-52 is currently expected to be in service into the 2040s. Despite metal fatigue and obsolescence of major subsystems, Boeing and the USAF have been able to keep them flying decades beyond their original planned life and probably will be able to do so for decades more. The decreased operating costs and increased capabilities of replacing the extremely obsolete engines is almost certainly worth it. Even for its commercial designs, Boeing has a long history of keeping old designs viable by switching to newer, more efficient and powerful engines. Just last year, they decided to yet again re-engine the 737, which first flew in 1967.
You think current heavy bomber crews see their victims? They have been completely removed from the death they cause on the ground since WWII. This is how it works: A heavy bomber crew is given a target to bomb, then take off, cruise to the target, release their weapons and go home. Do you really think a remote operator would behave much differently given the same orders?
This works when the mission is over a foreign country. The crew would probably twig to something not being right if their flight plan puts the target area within 15 minutes flight time from their base in Nebraska, for example.
As to remote operators, the newest thing in military drone tech is autonomous drones and fighter/bomber aircraft systems that do not require a remote operator. Ground crew simply loads encrypted flight plan/mission data that they receive on an encrypted portable storage device without any clue as to what the mission may be, outside of what weapons/bomb and fuel payload is specified for the particular mission.
With such a system, the ground crew could be launching bombing missions on their own families without realizing it. Suspect that too many military personnel at one of your domestic military bases is sympathetic to civilians attempting to rebel against your decree of martial law? Have them effectively bomb themselves without even knowing it!
What's not for a tyrant to like?
Strat
The capability for the top military brass to launch weapons to hit anywhere on the globe with minimal intervention from lower ranks has existed for several decades. There are still personnel in missile silos and submarines that have to hit the buttons to launch the ICBMs, but their responsibility is very similar to what you describe. I wouldn't be surprised if cruise missiles launched from bombers or ships can be handled in a similar way. I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid. I'm saying they might as well be realized today.
The question of whether to re-engine the B-52 has been waffled over since the 1960s. It obviously would have been worth it to do so in the 60s or 70s since the B-52 has been in service much longer than was then expected. Perhaps once people realize no sexy new stealth bomber will replace the B-52, sanity will eventually reign.
Oh and one more thing, think about this folks...the PS3 was hacked by a bunch of talented guys doing it in their FREE TIME . Imagine what they could have done if they were paid to hack into something like a remote control bomber as a full time job!?!
You need to be careful when using a term with such diverse meanings as "hack." The "hacking" of the PS3 you refer to is some people gaining control over their own machines in their possession. Normally, we refer to this as "using" the machine. The fact that the gaining full control over one's own property is now a challenge and considered remarkable is a sad thing indeed.
Gaining control over a remote machine flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour thousands of feet in the air is a totally different prospect. The USAF has the ability to employ multiple hardware as well as software security measures. They can communicate with their machines via narrow beams transmitted from satellites. On the software side, cryptographic security can actually work when the secret keys remain secret, something which is impossible to guarantee when the attacker has access to the hardware.
I'm sure the "optionally manned" part is to allow future military leaders to choose the appropriate tradeoffs.
It's also a great feature to enable removing final say from human pilots/crew on whether or not to actually drop those JDAMs on those pesky civilian women and children attempting to rise up against the government-mandated domestic food shortages, mass roundups of "dangerous dissidents", and mass internment programs when the shit hits the fan.
These guys aren't stupid. They've seen "Running Man". They're just not confident in the ratings numbers and advertising revenue that the "Running Man" solution could garner.
Strat
You think current heavy bomber crews see their victims? They have been completely removed from the death they cause on the ground since WWII. This is how it works: A heavy bomber crew is given a target to bomb, then take off, cruise to the target, release their weapons and go home. Do you really think a remote operator would behave much differently given the same orders? If anything he might be more likely to take pity on his potential victims on the ground since they haven't been putting his life in danger during the flight.
It is easier to kill if you don't think of the target as fully human. The ability to dehumanize an enemy has progressed ever since people developed ways to kill at a distance. Even ancient bowmen weren't likely to see the direct effects of their weapons. However, we have developed increasingly effective ways of killing at a distance in the last century. Remotely controlling a bomber is merely an incremental step in this direction.
I expect a true B52 replacement would be something more like an adapted airliner or cargo plane.
There seems to be an obsession in certain areas with stealth. Meanwhile, planes like the B52 and A10 do an exceptionally good job and neither have credible replacements.
I expect a true B-52 replacement to be an upgraded B-52, as has been the case for decades. In particular, the current 8 engines should be replaced with 4 modern, efficient, high-bypass designs. It seems the Air Force has been thinking about this since the 70s, but since it's always "about to be replaced" by the something sexier and stealthier, they haven't bothered. Once somebody realizes that a sexier design won't replace it any time soon, the needed upgrades can be done.
A more modern cargo or passenger design could be converted into a bomber, but that would almost certainly be far more expensive and/or less functional than re-engining B-52s, since upgrades of other major systems like avionics have already been done over the decades. Also, a cargo or passenger plane would be unnecessarily bulky for carrying something as dense as bombs and missiles.
You could just as easily argue that education, health care, welfare and transportation actually benefit Americans, while the current level of military spending gives us such great power that there's a constant temptation to misuse it. We've gained absolutely nothing from the Iraq War, but gotten a lot of Americans and a lot more Iraqis killed in the process. Invading Afghanistan certainly disrupted Al Qaeda for a while, but how much longer can we try to occupy the country when it's clear that the people have little respect for us or the corrupt government we're backing? How long will it take for Al Qaeda to resume operations as normal once we leave if they haven't already gotten comfortable in Pakistan and other places?
I think the amount being spent on both military and the things you mention is too much. We will need to reduce in all areas to get budgets under control.
I see another layer of avoiding responsibility for casualties emerging here. Ignoring the technology's effectiveness or benefits, the industrial-military complex has never been good at taking responsibility.
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They were depriving us of their valuable resources.
Those people were [insert hate group here].
They allowed themselves to be used as human shields.
Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
All of the above has happened numerous times in the past and will continue to happen regardless of the types of weapons used in war.
I envision that in the future, innocent people will be killed and new excuses will be created and they will say it was because their biometrics matched that of the target, or that there was an error in the targeting system, or that they made a hostile gesture at the killing machine that was 'innocently' going about it's business above his house. But never do I expect to see them come straight out and say "We screwed up. Sorry."
Indeed, those in charge are unlikely to admit making mistakes. They will use whatever excuse they can, which may vary depending on circumstances like the weapons technology.
No matter how great the technology is, what I want to here isn't about how efficient it is, but how human the people pushing the buttons are. If someone is hurt or killed that wasn't supposed to be, will they admit it? Will they compensate the victim? The families? The rest of the community that was deprived of the loss? Until that happens, all that this new technology will mean is more creative ways for bureuacracy to avoid responsibility, which is, afterall, its primary function.
The primary function of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself. It will take responsibility for something perceived positive and avoid responsibility for something perceived negative. As citizens, we need to make sure the military is defending the country and nothing more.
If war was no more complicated than two societies who couldn't resolve their differences each sending a certain number of soldiers to be incinerated in some machine located on an island, and the country with the biggest number won, then I suspect war would be a lot less common. All these layers of technology and rationalization takes away from the fact that is all war is. Technology just means we have to sacrifice fewer to the machine than the other team does.
Sacrificing fewer to the machine than the enemy has always been a motivation when fighting wars. That's why people have developed better tactics, weapons, armor, transportation, communication and other technologies. Any other system would have to be enforced from the outside, which is impossible. I think it is extremely important that we be able to fight more efficiently than an enemy and therefore lose fewer people. As George S. Patton said, "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
Having an efficient military is not the same as misusing it. Perhaps if we had a smaller, more efficient military, it would be more difficult to get us into unnecessary wars. Mandatory military service would probably also discourage unnecessary use of the military, but that's unlikely to be brought back.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is patents on intangible things that were not until recently patentable like software and processes. I don't think patents on tangible inventions were used as weapons nearly as often. Now, it's not possible to write software and be confident you haven't unwittingly infringed someone's patent.
Daylight is incredibly important to our health, especially if you're older. No, flashlights are not a proper replacement.
You're so right. I'm sure glad we have a government who cares about us enough to tell us when to get up and go to bed.
It's common sense for the police to treat the man as if he's lying. If the police assume he's telling the truth they risk putting a child in danger (and failing in their duty to protect the innocent) but if they assume he's lying then they can take measures.
That is not common sense. It's certainly not protecting the innocent. Rather, it's yet another recent example of authorities ignoring the essential principle of the presumption of innocence.
"Because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, a business model based on willful ignorance and scamming people."
which happens to be a business model that works, unfortunately
Don't forget who's pushing this. They're the same people who have convinced millions that bricks with mutilated fruit on them are worth twice as much as other bricks.
As soon as commercial recordings start using all 16 bits of depth available in CD, MP3, Vorbis or FLAC, I'll start caring about higher sample depths. Most recordings are so compressed they might as well be 8 bit.
Can someone explain to me what KHz "sampling rate" has to do with the frequency range you can sample?
Since you are obviously too lazy to read TFA, you can just read about the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem yourself.
You clearly didn't read TFA. It explains in excruciating detail why recording sample rates above 48 kHz are irrelevant with modern equipment that does high quality oversampling transparently. More importantly, unless you can prove your 96 kHz recordings sound better than the same ones downsampled to 48 kHz with a double blind test, your opinion is worthless because of confirmation bias. The 96 kHz recording sounds better to you simply because you expect it to. You might as well argue that a $400 two-way speaker sounds better than others because it's made out of wood from a whiskey barrel.
The "test servers" you mention could be any number of hops away, so I wouldn't consider them a reliable way to test latency. I always test latency by pinging my ISP's closest router pointed to by my default route. For me, anything over 20ms would be unacceptable. I am usually able to find game servers at around 50ms.
I read TFA. Yes, I know - I must be new here, etc.
Let me save you time. It's the usual self-congratulating corporatespeak. Basically, they discovered it's a good idea to have a good fit between Google and the acquired startup, and a bunch of other common sense "rules" anyone with half a brain could come up with.
What you may be missing is that unlike most corporate executives, Googles' brains don't seem to have melted and drifted down or dribbled out their ears yet.
There's nothing wrong with preferring printed books and I'm sure most people will for some time. There is something wrong with attacking a technology as "damaging society" just because you don't understand it and don't like to use it personally as Franzen has done.
That's it.
Don't use iPad for reading.
Or just turn off the network connections on the tablet while reading, as Franzen said he does when writing.
I have adopted a hybrid approach. Like you, I usually wait until I can get an older game at a significant discount since the quality of a game has little to do with whether it was released in the last year. However, there are some which I'm willing to pay full price to get as soon as possible.
Although I hate DRM in principle, Steam is the least problematic DRM system I've encountered. In my experience, Steam has not generally interfered with what I want to do with games and the automatic updates are convenient. It has not prevented me from heavily modifying a number of games it manages. The one thing it makes impossible or very inconvenient is to transfer a copy of a game to someone else. Most of the games I've obtained using Steam have been heavily discounted compared to the full retail price either because they're part of a bundle or several years old so the tradeoff has been worth it for me so far.
Indeed, traditional ideas of property and copyright are no longer sufficient. I think the solution for code is that it should all be released as Free and Open Source at the same time a game or other product or service using the code is released or made available to the public. That allows for service models without the downsides for users. I'm far more likely to pay for a service if I know that I'm not locked into the one provider by their proprietary server and/or client software. If all services were like that, the market would be much more competitive than it is now since anyone can start a directly competing service at any time and customers aren't locked in.
However, that only partly solves the problem when there's a significant amount of the software that's not code, as is the case with games. Perhaps the non-code parts of games should continue to be covered by ordinary copyright with simple proprietary licenses. If you pay for a copy of the game, you are given permission to use art, map designs, music and other non-code parts on your machine. That permission would be separate from use of any services while playing the game.
Of course, this scenario is extremely unlikely since established game designers and publishers like the proprietary advantages they currently enjoy. They don't want a world in which they have to compete on quality of game design and service alone.
The game itself should always be classified as a "good", and should be able to be used in some form or another on it's own.
Connection to a server in order to play with others, however, is a service.
So, where does that leave multiplayer only games? It makes sense to consider a multiplayer game than can connect to a server run by anyone a good. For example, most of the Valve engine based games like Counter Strike seem to be this way. However, for many multiplayer games, each player only has a client and the server functionality is never released in any form. Most MMORPGs are this way as well as many games of other genres. Does it make sense to consider the World of Warcraft client a good when it's utterly useless without the service?
This move should be vindicated in the near future. But I do have some qualms:
- Appreciating data-types, their limitations and the perils of using casting them incorrectly helped me a lot in understanding about things I need to be careful about
- Are they going skip the concept of Pointers ? It's not wise to use them unless necessary but to be aware of the concept was very rewarding for me
- How will they teach multi-threaded programming? We're not quite there yet in JS. ... (insert other features here)
If they switch to another language to teach stuff which JS doesn't support, they might lose their audience and so blind side a large set of them.
Javascript does have types. Don't confuse dynamic typing with typelessness. None of the other things is essential to learning the basics of programming. Both pointers are threads are powerful but low-level tools which beginning students don't need to tackle. Most high level programming using modern languages doesn't need to be concerned with pointers at all any more. Unfortunately, we don't yet have good high level abstractions for dealing with concurrency and most threading models are often more trouble than they're worth.
When a sufficiently advanced class needed to teach the concepts of pointers and threads, it could use C or C++. Starting with Javascript wouldn't hurt that class. In fact, the more languages a student is exposed to while learning, the less limited his thinking will be in general.
Though the bomber described in TFA could certainly be used in the way you describe, I expect the UAVs already in service or soon to go into service to be even better suited for that role. I'm far more concerned about thousands of small surveillance and/or strike drones than a few tens of B1 or B2-sized planes. This new bomber will be far too expensive to build and operate in large numbers whether they're flown with humans aboard or not while small UAVs already cost tiny fractions of traditional strike aircraft to build and operate.
I too would be more worried about smaller autonomous strike drones. Currently, I'm only aware of armed autonomous drones of the size of a small fighter plane or larger. I'm sure much smaller armed autonomous drones aren't far off, however.
We're just about at the point technologically where some of the science-fiction dystopian-themed "killer drone" tech from movies and novels is becoming not only possible, but economical.
Considering the ever-more totalitarian/authoritarian direction that the US and other Western governments are going, this worries me.
Strat
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator carries 2 Hellfire air to ground missiles and is much smaller than any figher plane in use today. Its maximum takeoff weight is only 1,020 kg compared to 19,200 kg for an F-16. It has a 115 HP engine and cruises at 81-103 MPH for 24 hours at a time. That means that it can wait for an ideal time to strike while a fighter would run out of fuel. It will also be far harder to detect for an ordinary observer due its small size, quiet engine and slow speed.
Of course, there have been weapons systems that have had a minimal enough chain of humans with the ability to know the actual targets, etc. However, the systems of the past were for the most part things like nuclear missiles, which are very wide-area, total-destruction, extremely "blunt instruments" not ideally-suited to domestic rebellions/uprisings/civil wars.
This would provide, among other things, an extremely-enhanced ability to keep lower ranks "out of the loop" while also being capable of a much more precise and "surgical" strike capability. This is much better suited to suppressing rebellions and uprisings while maintaining some level of deny-ability, particularly in the early stages, than missiles and other older weapons systems.
Strat
Though the bomber described in TFA could certainly be used in the way you describe, I expect the UAVs already in service or soon to go into service to be even better suited for that role. I'm far more concerned about thousands of small surveillance and/or strike drones than a few tens of B1 or B2-sized planes. This new bomber will be far too expensive to build and operate in large numbers whether they're flown with humans aboard or not while small UAVs already cost tiny fractions of traditional strike aircraft to build and operate.
I don't have nearly enough information to judge the overall cost effectiveness of every scenario. What I do know is that the US Air Force has never used a passenger or cargo design as a heavy bomber, though the Boeing did develop passenger and/or freight planes from its B-17 and B-29 bombers. In both cases, the fuselages were greatly enlarged since passengers and normal cargo is far less dense than bombs.
When considering the choice of a potential existing design to adapt into a bomber, you have to consider much more than the basic technical capabilities. Boeing, the manufacturer of the B-52 and the only remaining American company manufacturing large passenger and cargo aircraft has been been making a radical transition to global outsourcing in recent years. I doubt the USAF is likely to buy any bombers with major parts manufactured in Japan, Korea, India and France as the 787 is. They are even less likely to buy bombers from Airbus or Tupolev.
Whether for good reasons or bad, the USAF is very unlikely to adapt a passenger or cargo plane to be a heavy bomber. They are very likely to continue using the B-52 for decades. The B-52 is currently expected to be in service into the 2040s. Despite metal fatigue and obsolescence of major subsystems, Boeing and the USAF have been able to keep them flying decades beyond their original planned life and probably will be able to do so for decades more. The decreased operating costs and increased capabilities of replacing the extremely obsolete engines is almost certainly worth it. Even for its commercial designs, Boeing has a long history of keeping old designs viable by switching to newer, more efficient and powerful engines. Just last year, they decided to yet again re-engine the 737, which first flew in 1967.
You think current heavy bomber crews see their victims? They have been completely removed from the death they cause on the ground since WWII. This is how it works: A heavy bomber crew is given a target to bomb, then take off, cruise to the target, release their weapons and go home. Do you really think a remote operator would behave much differently given the same orders?
This works when the mission is over a foreign country. The crew would probably twig to something not being right if their flight plan puts the target area within 15 minutes flight time from their base in Nebraska, for example.
As to remote operators, the newest thing in military drone tech is autonomous drones and fighter/bomber aircraft systems that do not require a remote operator. Ground crew simply loads encrypted flight plan/mission data that they receive on an encrypted portable storage device without any clue as to what the mission may be, outside of what weapons/bomb and fuel payload is specified for the particular mission.
With such a system, the ground crew could be launching bombing missions on their own families without realizing it. Suspect that too many military personnel at one of your domestic military bases is sympathetic to civilians attempting to rebel against your decree of martial law? Have them effectively bomb themselves without even knowing it!
What's not for a tyrant to like?
Strat
The capability for the top military brass to launch weapons to hit anywhere on the globe with minimal intervention from lower ranks has existed for several decades. There are still personnel in missile silos and submarines that have to hit the buttons to launch the ICBMs, but their responsibility is very similar to what you describe. I wouldn't be surprised if cruise missiles launched from bombers or ships can be handled in a similar way. I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid. I'm saying they might as well be realized today.
The question of whether to re-engine the B-52 has been waffled over since the 1960s. It obviously would have been worth it to do so in the 60s or 70s since the B-52 has been in service much longer than was then expected. Perhaps once people realize no sexy new stealth bomber will replace the B-52, sanity will eventually reign.
Oh and one more thing, think about this folks...the PS3 was hacked by a bunch of talented guys doing it in their FREE TIME . Imagine what they could have done if they were paid to hack into something like a remote control bomber as a full time job!?!
You need to be careful when using a term with such diverse meanings as "hack." The "hacking" of the PS3 you refer to is some people gaining control over their own machines in their possession. Normally, we refer to this as "using" the machine. The fact that the gaining full control over one's own property is now a challenge and considered remarkable is a sad thing indeed.
Gaining control over a remote machine flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour thousands of feet in the air is a totally different prospect. The USAF has the ability to employ multiple hardware as well as software security measures. They can communicate with their machines via narrow beams transmitted from satellites. On the software side, cryptographic security can actually work when the secret keys remain secret, something which is impossible to guarantee when the attacker has access to the hardware.
I'm sure the "optionally manned" part is to allow future military leaders to choose the appropriate tradeoffs.
It's also a great feature to enable removing final say from human pilots/crew on whether or not to actually drop those JDAMs on those pesky civilian women and children attempting to rise up against the government-mandated domestic food shortages, mass roundups of "dangerous dissidents", and mass internment programs when the shit hits the fan.
These guys aren't stupid. They've seen "Running Man". They're just not confident in the ratings numbers and advertising revenue that the "Running Man" solution could garner.
Strat
You think current heavy bomber crews see their victims? They have been completely removed from the death they cause on the ground since WWII. This is how it works: A heavy bomber crew is given a target to bomb, then take off, cruise to the target, release their weapons and go home. Do you really think a remote operator would behave much differently given the same orders? If anything he might be more likely to take pity on his potential victims on the ground since they haven't been putting his life in danger during the flight.
It is easier to kill if you don't think of the target as fully human. The ability to dehumanize an enemy has progressed ever since people developed ways to kill at a distance. Even ancient bowmen weren't likely to see the direct effects of their weapons. However, we have developed increasingly effective ways of killing at a distance in the last century. Remotely controlling a bomber is merely an incremental step in this direction.
I expect a true B52 replacement would be something more like an adapted airliner or cargo plane.
There seems to be an obsession in certain areas with stealth. Meanwhile, planes like the B52 and A10 do an exceptionally good job and neither have credible replacements.
I expect a true B-52 replacement to be an upgraded B-52, as has been the case for decades. In particular, the current 8 engines should be replaced with 4 modern, efficient, high-bypass designs. It seems the Air Force has been thinking about this since the 70s, but since it's always "about to be replaced" by the something sexier and stealthier, they haven't bothered. Once somebody realizes that a sexier design won't replace it any time soon, the needed upgrades can be done.
A more modern cargo or passenger design could be converted into a bomber, but that would almost certainly be far more expensive and/or less functional than re-engining B-52s, since upgrades of other major systems like avionics have already been done over the decades. Also, a cargo or passenger plane would be unnecessarily bulky for carrying something as dense as bombs and missiles.
You could just as easily argue that education, health care, welfare and transportation actually benefit Americans, while the current level of military spending gives us such great power that there's a constant temptation to misuse it. We've gained absolutely nothing from the Iraq War, but gotten a lot of Americans and a lot more Iraqis killed in the process. Invading Afghanistan certainly disrupted Al Qaeda for a while, but how much longer can we try to occupy the country when it's clear that the people have little respect for us or the corrupt government we're backing? How long will it take for Al Qaeda to resume operations as normal once we leave if they haven't already gotten comfortable in Pakistan and other places?
I think the amount being spent on both military and the things you mention is too much. We will need to reduce in all areas to get budgets under control.
I see another layer of avoiding responsibility for casualties emerging here. Ignoring the technology's effectiveness or benefits, the industrial-military complex has never been good at taking responsibility.
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They were depriving us of their valuable resources.
Those people were [insert hate group here].
They allowed themselves to be used as human shields.
Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
All of the above has happened numerous times in the past and will continue to happen regardless of the types of weapons used in war.
I envision that in the future, innocent people will be killed and new excuses will be created and they will say it was because their biometrics matched that of the target, or that there was an error in the targeting system, or that they made a hostile gesture at the killing machine that was 'innocently' going about it's business above his house. But never do I expect to see them come straight out and say "We screwed up. Sorry."
Indeed, those in charge are unlikely to admit making mistakes. They will use whatever excuse they can, which may vary depending on circumstances like the weapons technology.
No matter how great the technology is, what I want to here isn't about how efficient it is, but how human the people pushing the buttons are. If someone is hurt or killed that wasn't supposed to be, will they admit it? Will they compensate the victim? The families? The rest of the community that was deprived of the loss? Until that happens, all that this new technology will mean is more creative ways for bureuacracy to avoid responsibility, which is, afterall, its primary function.
The primary function of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself. It will take responsibility for something perceived positive and avoid responsibility for something perceived negative. As citizens, we need to make sure the military is defending the country and nothing more.
If war was no more complicated than two societies who couldn't resolve their differences each sending a certain number of soldiers to be incinerated in some machine located on an island, and the country with the biggest number won, then I suspect war would be a lot less common. All these layers of technology and rationalization takes away from the fact that is all war is. Technology just means we have to sacrifice fewer to the machine than the other team does.
Sacrificing fewer to the machine than the enemy has always been a motivation when fighting wars. That's why people have developed better tactics, weapons, armor, transportation, communication and other technologies. Any other system would have to be enforced from the outside, which is impossible. I think it is extremely important that we be able to fight more efficiently than an enemy and therefore lose fewer people. As George S. Patton said, "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
Having an efficient military is not the same as misusing it. Perhaps if we had a smaller, more efficient military, it would be more difficult to get us into unnecessary wars. Mandatory military service would probably also discourage unnecessary use of the military, but that's unlikely to be brought back.