Unfortunately, it has been conclusively proven by experience that the risk of an incapacitated pilot causing an accident is much, much less than the risk of a pilot and computer being at odds over the correct course of action in an emergency, or the risk of computer settings confusing the pilot. I prefer the Boeing design philosophy, which is that the pilot is the final authority on the operation of the airplane, not the computer. The pilot, not the software engineer, is on board the airplane, and therefore has a much higher interest in ensuring that the vehicle gets on the ground in one piece.
You're referring to the destruction of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes near the Strait of Hormuz, on July 4, 1988. For one thing, it was an Airbus A300 (bigger and older than an A320). The failure there was mostly in human decision making, not in the AEGIS radar system, which faithfully reported that the airliner was travelling at 450 knots on a steady bearing towards Vincennes, roughly four miles outside the commercial air corridor, and not broadcasting IFF information (which of course they wouldn't, as a foreign civilian airliner). It was the officers of Vincennes who interpreted this information as a threat, misidentified the target as an Iranian F14, and destroyed it.
Even if we agree that freedom of the press means strictly that an individual can publish whatever they want without sanction (which I believe is incomplete), I would say that this has suffered. If I told you that you could say what you like without fear of going to prison, but if you criticize the government, you could lose your job or forefeit any chance of ever being employed by the dominant company in your field, is that freedom?
This is made worse by the fact that the owner of CanWest is a friend of the Prime Minister, and the widely held perception that the PM has thereby influenced CanWest's news coverage. It is widely suspected that the PM was involved in the firing of Russell Mills.
Well, I would be concerned if the news monopoly was in bed with the government (which it is), and if they were stifling dissent on their own staff (which they are). In other words, no dissenting voices are tolerated in the company that basically controls the national media. And thanks for the suggestion to start my own paper. You're just as free to write an Office suite to compete with Microsoft, good luck with that.
If you live in, let's say, Calgary, your choices for the daily paper are the Calgary Herald (owned by CanWest) and the Calgary Sun (which is basically a tabloid). You could switch to the Globe and Mail, but you would never read a local story again. Are you arguing that de facto monopolies are under no obligation to serve the public good? Isn't this the definition of antitrust?
At least one local paper in virtually every major city, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Halifax, is owned by the CanWest Global. The same organization owns the National Post, one of the two national papers, and Global TV, one of three national broadcasters. CanWest Global is owned by Izzy Asper, who is an open supporter of the ruling Liberal party and is chummy with the Prime Minister. (In most cities, the only other paper is owned by the Sun group, which publishes tabloid-quality news at best.)
CanWest Global has ordered every member paper to run unsigned national editorial, and not to publish local editorials that contradict the national line. Within the past few months, Russell Mills, the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, was fired by the parent company for publishing an article suggesting that the Prime Minister had been involved in a conflict of interest.
The people in the US that were willing to work all sorts of hours.
About fifteen years ago they were saying the same thing about Japan and look what happened. The American advantage is adaptability -- the ability to see a threat to their industries and respond forcefully. Again, in the case of Japan, the domestic auto industry transformed itself within a few years after seeing that the Japanese were providing what people wanted: cheap, reliable cars.
Now China has the most valuable resource: cheaper than hell labor.
Many companies that export labour under free trade agreements discover that paying 50 cents an hour gets you 50 cents an hour worth of labour -- in other words, it makes sense to pay higher wages to better-motivated workers, because the goods they produce are of better quality.
You're missing the point. If the drug/test/treatment didn't exist in the first place, those people would be just as dead. I'm not saying it's okay for a company to misuse a patent to extort money, but without a patent to protect their investment, there sure as hell is no obligation (or incentive) for anyone to do world-class, and very expensive, medical research.
Assuming you're not trolling. They are, in a way -- developing new medical science is not cheap. It might cost 10 cents a pill for some medication, but producing the first pill can cost a hundred million dollars. Why spend the research money if there's no way to recover that initial cost?
IQ is like penis length, it doesn't matter how big it is, it matters how you use it. As if IQ is a measure of a productive human being.
If Stallman was really smart, he would try using some diplomacy to convince people rather than alienating everyone and causing a flame war to erupt every time he opens his mouth.
And for the record, my own IQ is well short of 170. But I seem to get along just fine.
For example, the banning of nail clippers and other small personal items on flights when it is the mental state of the terrorist that is the true danger - not the everyday personal effects that can be transformed into weapons.
I agree with your post, until this last line. I find it absurd to argue that "The real problem is X" when the problem X cannot be addressed through any known or reasonable means -- do we propose administering polygraphs and personality tests as a requirement to board aircraft? It is this sort of reasoning that leads to statements like, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" -- which avoids discussing the obvious fact that we can't tell in advance which people are predisposed to kill people, and that there's no need to make it easy for them by making guns readily available.
Sometimes, the symptoms and not the root causes are all we are capable of dealing with. In that case, banning personal items is only one part of an overall strategy of being more vigilant with airline security, which -- who knows -- may have already paid dividends. At the very least we have increased the level of sophistication required to destroy an airplane.
Did you read the article? The only secure machine is a machine that is properly configured and continuously updated with the latest patches. They were originally arguing that they should charge for providing security as a service, in lieu of on-site technicians. In fact, they mentioned that the alternative to guarantee security would be to force customers to sign restrictive license agreements which would prevent anyone except a qualified tech from ever adjusting the machine's settings. An interesting compromise, if you ask me. And an altogether predictable knee-jerk response from Slashdot.
Microsoft did something in the best interests of Microsoft. elping consumers was an unfortunate, inadvertent side effect
But wait. The customers refused to buy something that they didn't want. Microsoft realized that such a strategy wouldn't earn them any money. Since Microsoft wants money, they avoided doing what the customers didn't want. Is it possible that the system works? *shudder*
It is you who are mistaken... about a great many things...
My experience is that the RedHat X.0 releases suck ass, the X.1 releases are a little better, and X.2+ are best. RedHat 6.0 was one of the most unstable OSes I have ever seen (most of the fault for that was probably the beta-release of Gnome that they included). RedHat 7.0 was a little better, but I remember a lot of unpleasant issues. I'm happy with 7.3, which is a nice, stable release, and I don't think I'll move to upgrade until at least 8.1 is out.
if you don't like the price of Bruce Springsteen, you're not going to switch to Broos Sprigstein who might be cheaper.
I don't listen to Bruce, I listen to GNU/Bruix. It doesn't play in every CD player, but the sources are included, so I can play the music myself and record it using a non-proprietary standard.
The fact that Hubble has given us incredible images never got the press that the original blunder did.
Not to mention the excellent job by engineers on the ground to figure out how to create usable images from the broken telescope.
Rather than screaming at Michael, why don't we all take time to reflect on how unfortunate it is that science fraud makes news while science successes never get more than a brief mention.
... but if Michael had taken the time to reflect on that in the first place, perhaps he wouldn't have written such an ignorant and inflammatory comment. I regret that he feels compelled to add a little zinger to the end of the stories he posts. Whether he's a narcissist or whether he does it just to yank people's chains, I'm strongly tempted to eliminate his stories in my preferences.
Actually it wasn't so long ago that ATM was the killer protocol, and people were talking about "IP over ATM". It has a lot going for it, too, like quality of service guarantees, but I guess the idea of shelling out six figures to Cisco for switches just wasn't appealing. IP is a dog of a protocol, but it's cheap to implement, which seems to be thie important thing.
The idea is that electrical power is clean in principle, because it can be generated from renewable and non-polluting sources. If everything requiring energy could be efficiently powered with electricity, we would be a long way towards ending the use of fossil fuels.
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed
on
The First Smiley :-)
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I agree for some types of humor. However, if you try to use text (such as e-mail, or this comment) to convey sarcasm, I guarantee you will come off as an asshole unless you indicate that you are kidding by using a smiley. Humor can be conveyed by any number of signals beyond the words themselves, such as tone of voice and facial expression.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, it has been conclusively proven by experience that the risk of an incapacitated pilot causing an accident is much, much less than the risk of a pilot and computer being at odds over the correct course of action in an emergency, or the risk of computer settings confusing the pilot. I prefer the Boeing design philosophy, which is that the pilot is the final authority on the operation of the airplane, not the computer. The pilot, not the software engineer, is on board the airplane, and therefore has a much higher interest in ensuring that the vehicle gets on the ground in one piece.
US shooting down Airbus 320
You're referring to the destruction of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes near the Strait of Hormuz, on July 4, 1988. For one thing, it was an Airbus A300 (bigger and older than an A320). The failure there was mostly in human decision making, not in the AEGIS radar system, which faithfully reported that the airliner was travelling at 450 knots on a steady bearing towards Vincennes, roughly four miles outside the commercial air corridor, and not broadcasting IFF information (which of course they wouldn't, as a foreign civilian airliner). It was the officers of Vincennes who interpreted this information as a threat, misidentified the target as an Iranian F14, and destroyed it.
OK. Write me back when you start that paper. Good luck with that.
Even if we agree that freedom of the press means strictly that an individual can publish whatever they want without sanction (which I believe is incomplete), I would say that this has suffered. If I told you that you could say what you like without fear of going to prison, but if you criticize the government, you could lose your job or forefeit any chance of ever being employed by the dominant company in your field, is that freedom?
This is made worse by the fact that the owner of CanWest is a friend of the Prime Minister, and the widely held perception that the PM has thereby influenced CanWest's news coverage. It is widely suspected that the PM was involved in the firing of Russell Mills.
It gets better. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is on the board of directors for the company that owns the Sun.
Well, I would be concerned if the news monopoly was in bed with the government (which it is), and if they were stifling dissent on their own staff (which they are). In other words, no dissenting voices are tolerated in the company that basically controls the national media. And thanks for the suggestion to start my own paper. You're just as free to write an Office suite to compete with Microsoft, good luck with that.
If you live in, let's say, Calgary, your choices for the daily paper are the Calgary Herald (owned by CanWest) and the Calgary Sun (which is basically a tabloid). You could switch to the Globe and Mail, but you would never read a local story again. Are you arguing that de facto monopolies are under no obligation to serve the public good? Isn't this the definition of antitrust?
At least one local paper in virtually every major city, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Halifax, is owned by the CanWest Global. The same organization owns the National Post, one of the two national papers, and Global TV, one of three national broadcasters. CanWest Global is owned by Izzy Asper, who is an open supporter of the ruling Liberal party and is chummy with the Prime Minister. (In most cities, the only other paper is owned by the Sun group, which publishes tabloid-quality news at best.)
CanWest Global has ordered every member paper to run unsigned national editorial, and not to publish local editorials that contradict the national line. Within the past few months, Russell Mills, the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, was fired by the parent company for publishing an article suggesting that the Prime Minister had been involved in a conflict of interest.
Fifth place, my ass.
The people in the US that were willing to work all sorts of hours.
About fifteen years ago they were saying the same thing about Japan and look what happened. The American advantage is adaptability -- the ability to see a threat to their industries and respond forcefully. Again, in the case of Japan, the domestic auto industry transformed itself within a few years after seeing that the Japanese were providing what people wanted: cheap, reliable cars.
Now China has the most valuable resource: cheaper than hell labor.
Many companies that export labour under free trade agreements discover that paying 50 cents an hour gets you 50 cents an hour worth of labour -- in other words, it makes sense to pay higher wages to better-motivated workers, because the goods they produce are of better quality.
Still, it's good to see free books preferred in some circles based on their merit, and not just the cost.
(*dons asbestos underwear*) What, you mean unlike free software?
You're missing the point. If the drug/test/treatment didn't exist in the first place, those people would be just as dead. I'm not saying it's okay for a company to misuse a patent to extort money, but without a patent to protect their investment, there sure as hell is no obligation (or incentive) for anyone to do world-class, and very expensive, medical research.
Assuming you're not trolling. They are, in a way -- developing new medical science is not cheap. It might cost 10 cents a pill for some medication, but producing the first pill can cost a hundred million dollars. Why spend the research money if there's no way to recover that initial cost?
IQ is like penis length, it doesn't matter how big it is, it matters how you use it. As if IQ is a measure of a productive human being.
If Stallman was really smart, he would try using some diplomacy to convince people rather than alienating everyone and causing a flame war to erupt every time he opens his mouth.
And for the record, my own IQ is well short of 170. But I seem to get along just fine.
Right now my wife and I are watching an old episode of a TV show no longer broadcast in our area or available tape. How are we watching it?
What does your wife think of you submitting a story to Slashdot while allegedly wating TV with her?
"No, honey I do not love that computer more than you." Please, please don't ask about the laptop ...
For example, the banning of nail clippers and other small personal items on flights when it is the mental state of the terrorist that is the true danger - not the everyday personal effects that can be transformed into weapons.
I agree with your post, until this last line. I find it absurd to argue that "The real problem is X" when the problem X cannot be addressed through any known or reasonable means -- do we propose administering polygraphs and personality tests as a requirement to board aircraft? It is this sort of reasoning that leads to statements like, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" -- which avoids discussing the obvious fact that we can't tell in advance which people are predisposed to kill people, and that there's no need to make it easy for them by making guns readily available.
Sometimes, the symptoms and not the root causes are all we are capable of dealing with. In that case, banning personal items is only one part of an overall strategy of being more vigilant with airline security, which -- who knows -- may have already paid dividends. At the very least we have increased the level of sophistication required to destroy an airplane.
Did you read the article? The only secure machine is a machine that is properly configured and continuously updated with the latest patches. They were originally arguing that they should charge for providing security as a service, in lieu of on-site technicians. In fact, they mentioned that the alternative to guarantee security would be to force customers to sign restrictive license agreements which would prevent anyone except a qualified tech from ever adjusting the machine's settings. An interesting compromise, if you ask me. And an altogether predictable knee-jerk response from Slashdot.
Microsoft did something in the best interests of Microsoft. elping consumers was an unfortunate, inadvertent side effect
But wait. The customers refused to buy something that they didn't want. Microsoft realized that such a strategy wouldn't earn them any money. Since Microsoft wants money, they avoided doing what the customers didn't want. Is it possible that the system works? *shudder*
It is you who are mistaken ... about a great many things ...
My experience is that the RedHat X.0 releases suck ass, the X.1 releases are a little better, and X.2+ are best. RedHat 6.0 was one of the most unstable OSes I have ever seen (most of the fault for that was probably the beta-release of Gnome that they included). RedHat 7.0 was a little better, but I remember a lot of unpleasant issues. I'm happy with 7.3, which is a nice, stable release, and I don't think I'll move to upgrade until at least 8.1 is out.
if you don't like the price of Bruce Springsteen, you're not going to switch to Broos Sprigstein who might be cheaper.
I don't listen to Bruce, I listen to GNU/Bruix. It doesn't play in every CD player, but the sources are included, so I can play the music myself and record it using a non-proprietary standard.
I wouldn't bother coming to Earth.
Why not? It's mostly harmless.The fact that Hubble has given us incredible images never got the press that the original blunder did.
Not to mention the excellent job by engineers on the ground to figure out how to create usable images from the broken telescope.
Rather than screaming at Michael, why don't we all take time to reflect on how unfortunate it is that science fraud makes news while science successes never get more than a brief mention.
... but if Michael had taken the time to reflect on that in the first place, perhaps he wouldn't have written such an ignorant and inflammatory comment. I regret that he feels compelled to add a little zinger to the end of the stories he posts. Whether he's a narcissist or whether he does it just to yank people's chains, I'm strongly tempted to eliminate his stories in my preferences.
I remember a chant from a while back:
Actually it wasn't so long ago that ATM was the killer protocol, and people were talking about "IP over ATM". It has a lot going for it, too, like quality of service guarantees, but I guess the idea of shelling out six figures to Cisco for switches just wasn't appealing. IP is a dog of a protocol, but it's cheap to implement, which seems to be thie important thing.
The idea is that electrical power is clean in principle, because it can be generated from renewable and non-polluting sources. If everything requiring energy could be efficiently powered with electricity, we would be a long way towards ending the use of fossil fuels.
I agree for some types of humor. However, if you try to use text (such as e-mail, or this comment) to convey sarcasm, I guarantee you will come off as an asshole unless you indicate that you are kidding by using a smiley. Humor can be conveyed by any number of signals beyond the words themselves, such as tone of voice and facial expression.