From TFA: "A more insidious explanation is that society as a whole is to blame. If Googleâ(TM)s Adsense service learns which ad combinations are more effective, it would first serve the arrest-related ads to all names at random. But this would change if it were to discover that click-throughs are more likely when these ads are served against a black-identifying name. In other words, the results merely reflect the discriminatory pattern of clicks from ordinary people."
Um... no. If "black sounding" names are discovered to be more likely to click through 'arrest ads', that's not the result of discrimination by "white sounding" clicks. No matter what I (with a "white sounding" name") click on, I can't make or influence a "black sounding" name to click on an 'arrest ad'. Self selection via clicks (sad as it is, and unquestionably driven by discrimination elsewhere in society) is not discrimination via clicks.
Take a look at early prototyped of various prototypes when things went over one generation. Like first prototype implementations of MFDs, or first HUDs, or first HMDs.
Why? They're about as relevant as my friends first draft of her new kid's book.
They looked daft and fake as hell because they were bad prototypes when people were trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.
So? This isn't a first generation fighter - the stuff that's wrong is very, very basic. It's stuff that anyone with even a modest level of knowledge about aviation knows is wrong. It's stuff that nobody with any actual aviation/engineering expertise would even try. In terms of Slashdot's favorite analogy, this mockup is like a mockup of next years Volkswagen - only the steering wheel is in the back seat and faces the right side, the engine has been replaced with a toaster oven, and there's a ski in place of the left rear wheel - and it's pointing at 45 degrees to the normal direction of travel.
You're getting some highly rated comments in defense of this 'mockup', but you really haven't a clue as to what you're talking about.
The point is that, even for a mockup, there's a lot of questionable things about it. It's too small overall, the cockpit is... oddly designed, the intakes are aerodynamically wrong, etc... etc...
I can trivially avoid radar detection merely by keeping far away. Your modern fighter isn't going to look-down and see me 300 NM away...
You can also avoid radar detection by remaining in the hanger, in both cases you're a non-threatening irrelevancy.
Now its very challenging to avoid a skin painting radar at 10 NM but further away. Thats part of the weasel wording. I'm guessing this Iranian experiment would be an epic fail at 10 NM but maybe at 50 NM it might work?
At 50 NM, a fighter is little threat to anyone unless it has fairly advanced radar and missile systems - and if it's emitting sufficient radar power to track a target from 50 NM... it's about as stealthy as a battleship in a kiddy pool.
Right. And on top of that, no submarine is going to hang about at periscope depth for the duration of the game. PD is a dangerous place as you have limited visibility and you're shallow enough for surface vessels to potentially get a piece of the 'scope or even the sail... Stealth also goes down when you have a 'scope and antennas making a wake on the surface. (On top of how exhausting it is for the control room party to maintain PD and a scope watch...)
Unless they're in port or on surface transit, boats will probably get the game and the score the same way they have for decades... fasties and non-alert boomers will pick it up when they next grab a sked or a satellite pass, alert boomers will pick up whatever gets sent across the wire (VLF).
Been there done that, got the t-shirt. Though back in the day it was something of a tradition to send the score of important games (especially the Army-Navy game) out as FLASH priority traffic. (I.E. went to the head of the queue and had transmission priority over pretty much everything but nuclear launch orders.)
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your overall point: UI eats tons of CPU & memory. However, the difficulty of coding against either command line or GUI depends on the API in use, not the complexity underneath.
And then there's the complexity and power requirements (both cycles and electrons) of the OS and the CPU/chipset that handles multitasking and background tasks... There's a lot more going on even in something as (seemingly) 'simple' as an iPhone than meets the eye - and even more so on a full sized desk- or lap- top. I think many coders fail to appreciate this because at best they don't have to deal with it (the OS or CPU does it automatically), and at worst they call a library function that someone else has written. Few on Slashdot seem to really appreciate the difference between consumer boxen (with all their bells and whistles) and dedicated systems.
By the way, Curiosity's UI is still on earth... and on dozens of different computers at Nasa. It's kind of silly to say curiosity is only powered by this tiny processor.... that processor is just accepting and implementing commands. All the data crunching is happening back here on earth by massive banks of computers.
Not true at all. Curiosity's computer must keep track of time (for communications windows). It also mediates between the processors out in the science instruments and formats the data for transmission. It processes images from the various cameras both for science data collection and for navigation. (Curiosity has an automatic navigation and hazard avoidance system, I.E. self driving software, the same as Opportunity and Spirit.) Etc... etc...
I'm not saying the earthbound portion of the system doesn't carry a good part of the load, but the onboard processor is a busy little beast that does much more than just "accepts and processes command [from Earth]'.
Hmm, extended cooking time. What takes time? Have you heard of convection? How about conduction? Radiation? Aren't those somehow involved in hot spots?
In microwave cooking, no, those things are not involved in hot spots because the power of the microwave and the speed they heat the food vastly overwhelm those effects. Hot spots in a microwave are almost overwhelmingly a function of the configuration of the food and the oven.
If you drop the power to the point where these effects dominate, you're no longer actually cooking or significantly heating your food.
You don't actually think do you?
For one's thoughts to have any value, one must first have an understanding of the topic. Your understanding approaches that of a two year old - you can parrot big words, but you have no clue what they actually mean.
Each control system requires comparatively little processing power but high reliability and redundancy. As an example, the back-up flight computer on the space shuttles was an HP-41CV/CX pocket calculator and later, an HP42S.
Um, no. The flight computers (prime and backup) on the Shuttle were IBM AP-101 - if they went, it was game over as the Shuttle was fly-by-wire. No handheld toy need apply.
There are good remote thermometers. Combine one with a microwave oven so that it scans your food, and dials back the power if hot spots occur, and stops cooking when a predetermined temperature reached.
That's about as useless an idea as I've ever heard. Dialing back power just extends cooking time, it doesn't cool the hot spot or prevent one from occurring. Nor does external temperature bear any noteable relationship to internal temperature.
It was about the geniuses that gave us the power station, and mighty minds they were, making incredible metal leaps off of the knowledge of the day. So even Watt and Faraday built on the work of others.
Where, in 2013, we BURN COAL TO DRIVE A STEAM ENGINE. I know I'm being facetious but it seems a shame that nearly 200 years later we haven't really moved on at all.
Somebody who thinks we "haven't moved on at all" in 200 years could be being facetious, or they could be ignorant of power plant and steam generation technology, or they could be just plain ignorant.
Seriously, while basic principles of operation may be the same, that plant no more resembles the steam engines of 200 years than the 787 resembles the Wright Flyer or my 2008 minivan resembles a Model T. It's different in practically every detail.
"RPI will extend Watson's reasoning and cognitive abilities to finance, information technology, business analytics, and other areas, IBM says."
The reason we go to school (at first at least) is really to learn how to learn. Which is what this is doing right now so when it has perfected the ability to learn, there's no real limit to what it can learn
We go to school for three reasons. The first is to learn how to learn, how to absorb and categorize knowledge. Watson, I believe has already demonstrated mastery of this - and that process is built into it's programming. The second is to absorb and master the basis facts, theory, skills, and processes of a given field. This again, Watson already has demonstrated a mastery of. The third is to learn how to think - the "reasoning and cognitive abilities" referred to in the article. And that's the hard one...
Even though it has taken AI researchers most of the last half century to even begin to master them, the first two are relatively easy. It's the third, the ability to reason (which builds on the previous two), that's difficult - something that even many intelligent and well educated humans never completely master. The process is made even more difficult because not only do different people appear to think differently - different trades and professions think differently.
The BBC is running a story about invention and innovation, suggesting that there have been no truly new inventions in a long time.
Well, no. The story is about innovation, invention is just barely mentioned - and that in passing. The bulk of the story is about innovations, cross pollination between industries and fields, and how innovations build on previous iterations. All of this leading up to opinion (unsurprisingly, since it's an opinion piece, not a "story" per se) that industries must avoid becoming insular to avoid being left behind. (Though it appears by "industries", it appears he actually means "British corporations".)
It leads to the question: what are the most recent things you can think of that have been actual, new inventions? Or has the high-tech revolution just been iterative innovation?"
Well, setting aside the fact that you've mistaken a supporting statement for a thesis... Why does it matter? Arguably, iterative innovation is every bit as important as invention. Progress is as much about the measured steps as it is about giant leaps.
If they make a statement its not TRUE or FALSE usually the answer would be "WELL... ITS COMPLICATED.. it depends how you look at it"
But the real problem isn't the politicians... because very few people are interested in hearing "well... it's more complicated than that" (let alone actually educating themselves on the issue). They want a simple black-or-white, true-or-false statement (as anyone who was on Facebook and saw the various image memes around election time) - and this software panders to that... to the further detriment of our political process.
College in the US has become the trade school for high tech jobs and professional sports players. There are still a few universities that emphasize intellectual pursuits above practical ones, but they are usually the most expensive. I don't think I'm the only one seeing the trend that is leading us to the new dark ages.
Modern colleges and universities (I.E. pretty much anything from the Middle Ages onwards) historically started as trade schools - and that's what they've been ever since. The purely 'intellectual' ones have *always* been the exception to the rule. (And even they, historically, weren't "pure" intellectualism, they really were just a high class trade school, meant to indoctrinate the upper classes.
Before you start talking about dark ages and Rome burning, you just might study a little history.
This calls for strong oversight (e.g. management, good luck with that)
*sigh* Yet somehow, it's been done successfully and recently with very complex projects - a fact that everyone replying to me has done their level best to ignore or handwave away.
You may be an engineer, but with statements like the on quoted above, you've decided to let bias and bromides substitute for facts.
I think your confusing a couple things here. CAD and simulation packages don't alleviate the need to build a "prototype" before mass production manufacturing.
Yet it has been done, successfully, multiple times in the recent past.
But you had better bet they build small pieces to validate their simulation models, or test particularly difficult portions of the design.
Sure, but that's not full prototyping as discussed by the OP, in fact it's utterly irrelevant.
That is why in "small" production runs like the navy does for subs, the first couple are always bastard children and nearly always end up getting retired early. They tweak small things and by the 2nd or 3rd model it preforms better, and then they build a dozen or so units which are basically identical.
Um... no. That's not even remotely true.
So, yes, computers have changed the dynamics of designing/building something, but the general trend may be described more like, delayed full scale prototyping rather than none at all.
Um, no. Like the OP, you're either stuck somewhere in last century, or you're completely and utterly clueless as to what you're talking about.
No, I'm not missing anything. The one missing something here is you - you have utterly no clue what you're talking about. Worse than that, you seem to believe that your utter ignorance can be disguised by using buzzwords and making absolute statements that have precisely zero basis in or connection with reality.
He's scum. He preyed on innocents without remorse and deserves punishment. And yet you're going to give him more jail time than he'd get for MURDER?
How much jail time would he get if he murdered 350 people? How much if he'd coerced just one person? Personally, considering the scale of his crime and the damage he's done to so many lives... I have no problem with locking him away for the rest of his life. even with intensive treatment, it's not clear he can ever be trusted to be loose in society again.
I hate that I have to stand beside him and say this is wrong. I hate that I have to support someone so despicable. I hate that the flawed system actually makes me support people like Gary Kazaryan.
Maybe you should indulge less in emotion, prejudice, and hyperbole and more in thinking - maybe you should make at least a token attempt at thinking and comparing at least something approaching like-for-like.
And yet it's something I must do.
And *that* is exactly why our society gets more polarized and more fucked up on a daily basis - because of people who proclaim "this is what I *must* do" without a shred of a rational basis for doing so.
Any manufacturer worth their salt (and Boeing is one) should be able to fully prototype their product prior to outsourcing bits of its production (except for things like batteries). But any parts that needs to fit together very precisely should be prototyped first.
Welcome to the 21st century, I hope your trip from 1950 was a comfortable one! Here in the 21st century computers have advanced to the point where we don't need to physically prototype things anymore - it can, and has been, done digitally for well over a decade now. In fact, one of the most complex things that man is currently building (a nuclear submarine, something else new to you but take my word on it) are now routinely and successfully designed and built without any physical prototype.
Seriously - you and a bunch of other commenters are utterly clueless as to the state-of-the-art of over a decade ago. Boeing has built (IIRC) three new aircraft now (plus major upgrades like the new 747) using completely digital design, visualization, and validation tools. While it's not entirely a mature technology, it's not new and very complex vehicles are and have been in service for years that were designed and built using it.
Prototyping persists with smaller items because the requisite systems and software are so expensive, and is enabled by the fact that the teams involved are relatively small and simple, physically located in one place, and the prototypes are relatively cheap and new ones can be turned around (at worst) in a few weeks. On the other hand, a mockup/prototype of something like a nuclear submarine or a major aircraft can cost tens of millions of dollars (or more) and take a year or more to assemble. To assume that the latter must prototype because the former do is... ludicrous at best.
The problem here isn't lack of prototyping, it appears that they tried to extend the process too far and the management systems weren't weren't set up properly to handle the new process.
The problem was that the system was designed on paper first, without actually building it.
o.O How exactly are you going to build something without a design to build to? Even if you're going to build a mockup or a prototype, you can't use it to iterate a design that doesn't exist. That being said, designing on paper and then building (or at least a prototype or a mockup) is pretty much how everything in the physical world is built.
That being said, Boeing has experience with designing on paper (actually in a computer) without building a mockup (the software tracked weights and balances, provided VR imagery, etc...) and it has worked tolerably well in the past. That design methodology is becoming more and more widespread thanks to computers, which (as with all new technologies) gets better and better with each generation. (Heck, Electric Boat designs and builds new types of nuclear submarines without physical mockups or prototypes nowadays.)
And of course the real beauty of digital design is that they can be shipped around the world to subcontractors, and they're much harder to misinterpret when dealing with complex three dimensional parts and systems. Equally, if everyone is using the same design system, you can easily import, track, and share changes and updates to the design made by subcontractors. (Doing so on paper, where in the case of an airplane there can be tens of thousands of drawings scattered anywhere from around the building to around the world, is a herculean task.)
Then the specs for the individual pieces were created, and those individual modules were built from the specs. The idea was that then the parts were completed, they would be integrated and work perfectly together. Of course, that never happens because when the pieces come together for the first time, unanticipated problems occur.
Of course unanticipated problems occur - sometimes major, sometimes minor. The key is to design and manage your systems and processes so as to minimize the unexpected problems. Boeing has done it successfully before, and even outsourced parts of the design work before - what's not entirely clear is why it failed so badly in this case. Mostly it appears that they leaped too far this time and the management processes lagged behind.
This is why early integration is a good idea and is part of the philosophy of release early, release often.
Ikea can do that with a spiffy new table lamp, because their early prototypes are (relatively) cheap and even if they have to have a new mold machined can be turned around in a few weeks. When the mockup of a new airplane costs upwards of eight figures and can take months to years to build? Not so much.
c'mon slashdotters, don't be that crank with a firm opinion about a deeply technical subject that's he can't be bothered to actually study.
You must be new here... outside of nerd culture and computers, the average slashdotter is *precisely* that crank on pretty much every topic.
This libor scandal is the real deal. It's as dirty as it gets. The more you know, the more pissed off you will be about it. Instead of saying "oh yeah, well, this other imaginary stuff is worse" try a little research. This is the kind of cheating that makes even a libertarian like me say "maybe we should have some more government oversight of these fundamentally dishonest weasels."
Indeed. As time goes by, it's becoming ever clearer that the whole [economic] mess the world has been in for the last four years is pretty much a result of those weasels and their cousins playing financial games. The worst part, is that in the main they're walking away scot free.
Yep. Any time the Soviets really wanted Berlin, they could have taken it in a matter of hours. But they knew we were there for 'face', and that an attack stood a good chance of provoking a much larger response than they might like... Even though both sides were ready for a general or nuclear war, neither really wanted it. And it's really, really hard politically to back away from that stance.
Yeah, I think that's why Poland was so different - also. being non violent and playing their own "workers organization" card against them put the Soviets in a difficult position.
Slashdot Mirror
If they were like the intakes you link you, you'd have a point. But, as they aren't, you don't have a clue.
From TFA: "A more insidious explanation is that society as a whole is to blame. If Googleâ(TM)s Adsense service learns which ad combinations are more effective, it would first serve the arrest-related ads to all names at random. But this would change if it were to discover that click-throughs are more likely when these ads are served against a black-identifying name. In other words, the results merely reflect the discriminatory pattern of clicks from ordinary people."
Um... no. If "black sounding" names are discovered to be more likely to click through 'arrest ads', that's not the result of discrimination by "white sounding" clicks. No matter what I (with a "white sounding" name") click on, I can't make or influence a "black sounding" name to click on an 'arrest ad'. Self selection via clicks (sad as it is, and unquestionably driven by discrimination elsewhere in society) is not discrimination via clicks.
Why? They're about as relevant as my friends first draft of her new kid's book.
So? This isn't a first generation fighter - the stuff that's wrong is very, very basic. It's stuff that anyone with even a modest level of knowledge about aviation knows is wrong. It's stuff that nobody with any actual aviation/engineering expertise would even try. In terms of Slashdot's favorite analogy, this mockup is like a mockup of next years Volkswagen - only the steering wheel is in the back seat and faces the right side, the engine has been replaced with a toaster oven, and there's a ski in place of the left rear wheel - and it's pointing at 45 degrees to the normal direction of travel.
You're getting some highly rated comments in defense of this 'mockup', but you really haven't a clue as to what you're talking about.
The point is that, even for a mockup, there's a lot of questionable things about it. It's too small overall, the cockpit is... oddly designed, the intakes are aerodynamically wrong, etc... etc...
You can also avoid radar detection by remaining in the hanger, in both cases you're a non-threatening irrelevancy.
At 50 NM, a fighter is little threat to anyone unless it has fairly advanced radar and missile systems - and if it's emitting sufficient radar power to track a target from 50 NM... it's about as stealthy as a battleship in a kiddy pool.
Right. And on top of that, no submarine is going to hang about at periscope depth for the duration of the game. PD is a dangerous place as you have limited visibility and you're shallow enough for surface vessels to potentially get a piece of the 'scope or even the sail... Stealth also goes down when you have a 'scope and antennas making a wake on the surface. (On top of how exhausting it is for the control room party to maintain PD and a scope watch...)
Unless they're in port or on surface transit, boats will probably get the game and the score the same way they have for decades... fasties and non-alert boomers will pick it up when they next grab a sked or a satellite pass, alert boomers will pick up whatever gets sent across the wire (VLF).
Been there done that, got the t-shirt. Though back in the day it was something of a tradition to send the score of important games (especially the Army-Navy game) out as FLASH priority traffic. (I.E. went to the head of the queue and had transmission priority over pretty much everything but nuclear launch orders.)
And then there's the complexity and power requirements (both cycles and electrons) of the OS and the CPU/chipset that handles multitasking and background tasks... There's a lot more going on even in something as (seemingly) 'simple' as an iPhone than meets the eye - and even more so on a full sized desk- or lap- top. I think many coders fail to appreciate this because at best they don't have to deal with it (the OS or CPU does it automatically), and at worst they call a library function that someone else has written. Few on Slashdot seem to really appreciate the difference between consumer boxen (with all their bells and whistles) and dedicated systems.
Not true at all. Curiosity's computer must keep track of time (for communications windows). It also mediates between the processors out in the science instruments and formats the data for transmission. It processes images from the various cameras both for science data collection and for navigation. (Curiosity has an automatic navigation and hazard avoidance system, I.E. self driving software, the same as Opportunity and Spirit.) Etc... etc...
I'm not saying the earthbound portion of the system doesn't carry a good part of the load, but the onboard processor is a busy little beast that does much more than just "accepts and processes command [from Earth]'.
In microwave cooking, no, those things are not involved in hot spots because the power of the microwave and the speed they heat the food vastly overwhelm those effects. Hot spots in a microwave are almost overwhelmingly a function of the configuration of the food and the oven.
If you drop the power to the point where these effects dominate, you're no longer actually cooking or significantly heating your food.
For one's thoughts to have any value, one must first have an understanding of the topic. Your understanding approaches that of a two year old - you can parrot big words, but you have no clue what they actually mean.
Um, no. The flight computers (prime and backup) on the Shuttle were IBM AP-101 - if they went, it was game over as the Shuttle was fly-by-wire. No handheld toy need apply.
That's about as useless an idea as I've ever heard. Dialing back power just extends cooking time, it doesn't cool the hot spot or prevent one from occurring. Nor does external temperature bear any noteable relationship to internal temperature.
You don't actually cook do you?
Somebody who thinks we "haven't moved on at all" in 200 years could be being facetious, or they could be ignorant of power plant and steam generation technology, or they could be just plain ignorant.
Seriously, while basic principles of operation may be the same, that plant no more resembles the steam engines of 200 years than the 787 resembles the Wright Flyer or my 2008 minivan resembles a Model T. It's different in practically every detail.
We go to school for three reasons. The first is to learn how to learn, how to absorb and categorize knowledge. Watson, I believe has already demonstrated mastery of this - and that process is built into it's programming. The second is to absorb and master the basis facts, theory, skills, and processes of a given field. This again, Watson already has demonstrated a mastery of. The third is to learn how to think - the "reasoning and cognitive abilities" referred to in the article. And that's the hard one...
Even though it has taken AI researchers most of the last half century to even begin to master them, the first two are relatively easy. It's the third, the ability to reason (which builds on the previous two), that's difficult - something that even many intelligent and well educated humans never completely master. The process is made even more difficult because not only do different people appear to think differently - different trades and professions think differently.
Well, no. The story is about innovation, invention is just barely mentioned - and that in passing. The bulk of the story is about innovations, cross pollination between industries and fields, and how innovations build on previous iterations. All of this leading up to opinion (unsurprisingly, since it's an opinion piece, not a "story" per se) that industries must avoid becoming insular to avoid being left behind. (Though it appears by "industries", it appears he actually means "British corporations".)
Well, setting aside the fact that you've mistaken a supporting statement for a thesis... Why does it matter? Arguably, iterative innovation is every bit as important as invention. Progress is as much about the measured steps as it is about giant leaps.
But the real problem isn't the politicians... because very few people are interested in hearing "well... it's more complicated than that" (let alone actually educating themselves on the issue). They want a simple black-or-white, true-or-false statement (as anyone who was on Facebook and saw the various image memes around election time) - and this software panders to that... to the further detriment of our political process.
Modern colleges and universities (I.E. pretty much anything from the Middle Ages onwards) historically started as trade schools - and that's what they've been ever since. The purely 'intellectual' ones have *always* been the exception to the rule. (And even they, historically, weren't "pure" intellectualism, they really were just a high class trade school, meant to indoctrinate the upper classes.
Before you start talking about dark ages and Rome burning, you just might study a little history.
*sigh* Yet somehow, it's been done successfully and recently with very complex projects - a fact that everyone replying to me has done their level best to ignore or handwave away.
You may be an engineer, but with statements like the on quoted above, you've decided to let bias and bromides substitute for facts.
Yet it has been done, successfully, multiple times in the recent past.
Sure, but that's not full prototyping as discussed by the OP, in fact it's utterly irrelevant.
Um... no. That's not even remotely true.
Um, no. Like the OP, you're either stuck somewhere in last century, or you're completely and utterly clueless as to what you're talking about.
No, I'm not missing anything. The one missing something here is you - you have utterly no clue what you're talking about. Worse than that, you seem to believe that your utter ignorance can be disguised by using buzzwords and making absolute statements that have precisely zero basis in or connection with reality.
How much jail time would he get if he murdered 350 people? How much if he'd coerced just one person? Personally, considering the scale of his crime and the damage he's done to so many lives... I have no problem with locking him away for the rest of his life. even with intensive treatment, it's not clear he can ever be trusted to be loose in society again.
Maybe you should indulge less in emotion, prejudice, and hyperbole and more in thinking - maybe you should make at least a token attempt at thinking and comparing at least something approaching like-for-like.
And *that* is exactly why our society gets more polarized and more fucked up on a daily basis - because of people who proclaim "this is what I *must* do" without a shred of a rational basis for doing so.
Welcome to the 21st century, I hope your trip from 1950 was a comfortable one! Here in the 21st century computers have advanced to the point where we don't need to physically prototype things anymore - it can, and has been, done digitally for well over a decade now. In fact, one of the most complex things that man is currently building (a nuclear submarine, something else new to you but take my word on it) are now routinely and successfully designed and built without any physical prototype.
Seriously - you and a bunch of other commenters are utterly clueless as to the state-of-the-art of over a decade ago. Boeing has built (IIRC) three new aircraft now (plus major upgrades like the new 747) using completely digital design, visualization, and validation tools. While it's not entirely a mature technology, it's not new and very complex vehicles are and have been in service for years that were designed and built using it.
Prototyping persists with smaller items because the requisite systems and software are so expensive, and is enabled by the fact that the teams involved are relatively small and simple, physically located in one place, and the prototypes are relatively cheap and new ones can be turned around (at worst) in a few weeks. On the other hand, a mockup/prototype of something like a nuclear submarine or a major aircraft can cost tens of millions of dollars (or more) and take a year or more to assemble. To assume that the latter must prototype because the former do is... ludicrous at best.
The problem here isn't lack of prototyping, it appears that they tried to extend the process too far and the management systems weren't weren't set up properly to handle the new process.
o.O How exactly are you going to build something without a design to build to? Even if you're going to build a mockup or a prototype, you can't use it to iterate a design that doesn't exist. That being said, designing on paper and then building (or at least a prototype or a mockup) is pretty much how everything in the physical world is built.
That being said, Boeing has experience with designing on paper (actually in a computer) without building a mockup (the software tracked weights and balances, provided VR imagery, etc...) and it has worked tolerably well in the past. That design methodology is becoming more and more widespread thanks to computers, which (as with all new technologies) gets better and better with each generation. (Heck, Electric Boat designs and builds new types of nuclear submarines without physical mockups or prototypes nowadays.)
And of course the real beauty of digital design is that they can be shipped around the world to subcontractors, and they're much harder to misinterpret when dealing with complex three dimensional parts and systems. Equally, if everyone is using the same design system, you can easily import, track, and share changes and updates to the design made by subcontractors. (Doing so on paper, where in the case of an airplane there can be tens of thousands of drawings scattered anywhere from around the building to around the world, is a herculean task.)
Of course unanticipated problems occur - sometimes major, sometimes minor. The key is to design and manage your systems and processes so as to minimize the unexpected problems. Boeing has done it successfully before, and even outsourced parts of the design work before - what's not entirely clear is why it failed so badly in this case. Mostly it appears that they leaped too far this time and the management processes lagged behind.
Ikea can do that with a spiffy new table lamp, because their early prototypes are (relatively) cheap and even if they have to have a new mold machined can be turned around in a few weeks. When the mockup of a new airplane costs upwards of eight figures and can take months to years to build? Not so much.
TFTFY.
You must be new here... outside of nerd culture and computers, the average slashdotter is *precisely* that crank on pretty much every topic.
Indeed. As time goes by, it's becoming ever clearer that the whole [economic] mess the world has been in for the last four years is pretty much a result of those weasels and their cousins playing financial games. The worst part, is that in the main they're walking away scot free.
Yep. Any time the Soviets really wanted Berlin, they could have taken it in a matter of hours. But they knew we were there for 'face', and that an attack stood a good chance of provoking a much larger response than they might like... Even though both sides were ready for a general or nuclear war, neither really wanted it. And it's really, really hard politically to back away from that stance.
Yeah, I think that's why Poland was so different - also. being non violent and playing their own "workers organization" card against them put the Soviets in a difficult position.