"He [Trudeau] is, by the way, the best social satirist of the second half of this century."
Actually, that's a couple of prophecies, if you consider the medical advances it's gonna take to keep Trudeau alive that long.
We're expected to believe that this man has produced a database that in some way encompasses the entire internet, and will continue to do so in real-time. He was able to do it because he is brilliant and employs the talents of out-of-the-box-thinking eccentrics. He can 'recover' any password, and in case he can't, he can crack the code faster than law enforcement.
He has not only archived the whole internet, but he has classified it. His software knows which sites are naughty and which are nice--everywhere on the fucking World Wide Web. His services can prevent your company's computer resources from being used to promote violence, foster anarchy, or (especially apropos) commit fraud.
Unfortunately for you, his client list is currently closed, due to oversubscription, so he won't be able to sign you up this month. Damn the luck.
Maybe he'll be able to squeeze you in when he checks Boeing's web site and finds out they only have 188,000 employees, so a lot of those '300,000 PC's' don't get turned on very often.
Quite right, no perfect system, so adopt a simple one and live with its foibles. I suggest that each account be allowed to cast one vote per post--'signal'(+1) or 'noise'(-1)--and readers be asked to ONLY vote on those posts they feel are worth spending a mouse click on. The system could use these votes, combined with data on the total number of eyeballs that have viewed the post, plus the same information on replies to that post, to come up with a variety of statistics. It would be possible to allow filters based on things like 'interest' (total votes/total views), and/or 'quality' (rating > X) and/or 'controversy' (high 'interest' with cumulative rating close to 0, indicating voters contradicting each other), etc. for either individual posts or entire threads. This would allow readers to decide if they're interested in only 'quality' posts or only 'stimulating' posts (i.e. posts that draw a lot of votes one way or the other), or only posts that are, say, both highly rated and receive many 'stimulating' replies, and so on. You get the idea.
Hold up a sec....you forgot to say if MY toolshed is locked like all the neighbors' toolsheds. How the hell am I supposed to have an epiphany if you omit details from the analogy?
What I haven't heard anybody say yet is this isn't just a question of competing technologies; it's a question of who's in control. The airlines and their pilots look at the mess the FAA has made of ATC in this country and imagine NOT that they could do better (which is possible, but it's not as easy a thing to do as it might appear), but that they can find a way to get by without 'interference' from ground-based control operations entirely. I've already heard it said that UPS's system could be expanded to 'reduce reliance' on ATC--it's the whole reason the display is intended for pilots, and not controllers.
Pilots and airline managers see a big, open sky, arbitrarily made small and congested by the imposition of 'airways' and 'Standard Terminal Arrival Routes' and 'Standard Instrument Departures', and conclude that without these FAA-created artifacts, modern technology would allow aircraft to depart, fly directly to their destination, and land with no hassles from Big Brother. What a laugh.
Ever been in a parking lot when everybody decided to ignore the white lines on the pavement and drive straight toward the exits?
This is not an oversimplification. Hartsfield Int'l in Atlanta has never done better than land 120 aircraft in an hour, and that was years ago, before they had so many heavy jets and before B757's started getting extra spacing for wake turbulence. On a cloudy day, landing 80 in an hour is something to cheer about. Despite this, the airlines routinely schedule 110+ arrivals in an hour. Sometimes over 35 in a quarter-hour. Without controllers to decide who lands and in what order, it's a parking-lot-funnel, at jetspeed, and with no brakes. From 360 degrees of the compass.
Giving pilots a picture of the airspace around them and the aircraft in it is an excellent idea, both as a back-up against ATC failure (it happens), and as a way to keep controllers (who do after all work for the government) honest. But it won't be getting the FAA out of anybody's hair anytime soon.
Well, like it or hate it, the system you describe is already in effect. Airliners are equipped with a collision avoidance system called TCAS, which attempts to provide 'Resolution Advisories' when it determines that a midair collision is likely. It has saved many lives over the last 15 years, both in cases where ATC failed to provide separation between IFR aircraft and in cases where an airliner was about to smack a VFR (visual flight rules--not under ATC control) aircraft. Unfortunately, it has also placed many aircraft much closer together than they would have been otherwise, because there is no way to explain to TCAS the controllers' intentions. If it appears that another aircraft is climbing (for instance) on a collision course with the TCAS aircraft, an alert will be issued even though the controller has cleared the climbing a/c to stop climb at the next altitude under the TCAS plane (providing the approved 1000 ft separation). If the TCAS computer calculates that a descent would provide the most clearance with the climbing plane (a 'crossing' RA), it will issue an RA to descend, not knowing that this will put the two planes together instead of keeping them apart.
This is inaccurate. First, GPS in common use as a primary nav system in the US. GPS is even legal for executing instrument approaches at hundreds of airports. Second, (and much more frustratingly for controllers), there are literally thousands of airline aircraft not equipped with RNAV, GPS, or even the old LORAN or Omega systems. They navigate using VORTACS, and the FAA doesn't spend a lot of money keeping the VORTACS accurate these day.
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"He [Trudeau] is, by the way, the best social satirist of the second half of this century." Actually, that's a couple of prophecies, if you consider the medical advances it's gonna take to keep Trudeau alive that long.
He has not only archived the whole internet, but he has classified it. His software knows which sites are naughty and which are nice--everywhere on the fucking World Wide Web. His services can prevent your company's computer resources from being used to promote violence, foster anarchy, or (especially apropos) commit fraud.
Unfortunately for you, his client list is currently closed, due to oversubscription, so he won't be able to sign you up this month. Damn the luck. Maybe he'll be able to squeeze you in when he checks Boeing's web site and finds out they only have 188,000 employees, so a lot of those '300,000 PC's' don't get turned on very often.
Quite right, no perfect system, so adopt a simple one and live with its foibles. I suggest that each account be allowed to cast one vote per post--'signal'(+1) or 'noise'(-1)--and readers be asked to ONLY vote on those posts they feel are worth spending a mouse click on. The system could use these votes, combined with data on the total number of eyeballs that have viewed the post, plus the same information on replies to that post, to come up with a variety of statistics. It would be possible to allow filters based on things like 'interest' (total votes/total views), and/or 'quality' (rating > X) and/or 'controversy' (high 'interest' with cumulative rating close to 0, indicating voters contradicting each other), etc. for either individual posts or entire threads. This would allow readers to decide if they're interested in only 'quality' posts or only 'stimulating' posts (i.e. posts that draw a lot of votes one way or the other), or only posts that are, say, both highly rated and receive many 'stimulating' replies, and so on. You get the idea.
Hold up a sec....you forgot to say if MY toolshed is locked like all the neighbors' toolsheds. How the hell am I supposed to have an epiphany if you omit details from the analogy?
What I haven't heard anybody say yet is this isn't just a question of competing technologies; it's a question of who's in control. The airlines and their pilots look at the mess the FAA has made of ATC in this country and imagine NOT that they could do better (which is possible, but it's not as easy a thing to do as it might appear), but that they can find a way to get by without 'interference' from ground-based control operations entirely. I've already heard it said that UPS's system could be expanded to 'reduce reliance' on ATC--it's the whole reason the display is intended for pilots, and not controllers. Pilots and airline managers see a big, open sky, arbitrarily made small and congested by the imposition of 'airways' and 'Standard Terminal Arrival Routes' and 'Standard Instrument Departures', and conclude that without these FAA-created artifacts, modern technology would allow aircraft to depart, fly directly to their destination, and land with no hassles from Big Brother. What a laugh. Ever been in a parking lot when everybody decided to ignore the white lines on the pavement and drive straight toward the exits? This is not an oversimplification. Hartsfield Int'l in Atlanta has never done better than land 120 aircraft in an hour, and that was years ago, before they had so many heavy jets and before B757's started getting extra spacing for wake turbulence. On a cloudy day, landing 80 in an hour is something to cheer about. Despite this, the airlines routinely schedule 110+ arrivals in an hour. Sometimes over 35 in a quarter-hour. Without controllers to decide who lands and in what order, it's a parking-lot-funnel, at jetspeed, and with no brakes. From 360 degrees of the compass. Giving pilots a picture of the airspace around them and the aircraft in it is an excellent idea, both as a back-up against ATC failure (it happens), and as a way to keep controllers (who do after all work for the government) honest. But it won't be getting the FAA out of anybody's hair anytime soon.
Well, like it or hate it, the system you describe is already in effect. Airliners are equipped with a collision avoidance system called TCAS, which attempts to provide 'Resolution Advisories' when it determines that a midair collision is likely. It has saved many lives over the last 15 years, both in cases where ATC failed to provide separation between IFR aircraft and in cases where an airliner was about to smack a VFR (visual flight rules--not under ATC control) aircraft. Unfortunately, it has also placed many aircraft much closer together than they would have been otherwise, because there is no way to explain to TCAS the controllers' intentions. If it appears that another aircraft is climbing (for instance) on a collision course with the TCAS aircraft, an alert will be issued even though the controller has cleared the climbing a/c to stop climb at the next altitude under the TCAS plane (providing the approved 1000 ft separation). If the TCAS computer calculates that a descent would provide the most clearance with the climbing plane (a 'crossing' RA), it will issue an RA to descend, not knowing that this will put the two planes together instead of keeping them apart.
Air Force does this too, on big planes like tankers. They're surprisingly good at it, too, if they're not cheating.
This is inaccurate. First, GPS in common use as a primary nav system in the US. GPS is even legal for executing instrument approaches at hundreds of airports. Second, (and much more frustratingly for controllers), there are literally thousands of airline aircraft not equipped with RNAV, GPS, or even the old LORAN or Omega systems. They navigate using VORTACS, and the FAA doesn't spend a lot of money keeping the VORTACS accurate these day.
That's odd. As an American, I can think of so many better reasons we should be the laughing stock of the world.