Frankly, I believe that computers make fewer mistakes than humans, so I would in fact prefer a plane with a single (or no) human pilots.
Before I get hit with a straw man, I am in no way saying that computers are infallible. Of course they are programmed by humans, and mistakes will be made. I am just saying that the error rate for computers is probably less than that for humans. We kinda suck at not making mistakes.
Well, what you believe doesn't matter, and computers make mistakes all the time. For example, a flight control system is affected by the external input it receives: a mechanical or electronic failure in a sensor can cause that computer to make an error even if the computer is functioning properly. In your view of things, the engineers who programmed that computer will have put in all the necessary logic to accommodate all possible failure modes, all the strange things that can happen to an aircraft in flight. Furthermore, they will have given that machine the ability to make judgment calls about situations it may never have experienced before. Having a pilot on-board is not about flying the plane to its destination: modern jetliners can do that by themselves quite nicely. It's about what happens when things go wrong, and they do so with monotonous regularity. Most such situations never make the news, because there was a pilot there who took over and handled what the automation could not.
I dunno... never underestimate the power of human stupidity, particularly when there's money involved. I mean, this particular board has tolerated a fruitcake as CEO for some time now.
Boards don't generally view CEOs who generate huge and increasing profits, and vast quantities of free publicity, as fruitcakes.
You sacrifice safety for expediency daily. Everyone does. It isn't black and white but a gradient. I do not think it is ridiculous to suggest the advance of modern technology has made co-pilots possibly unnecessarily redundant.
Of course it hasn't, and it won't until we have a true AI to run the show. Yes, if a flight proceeds normally a modern jetliner can pretty much fly itself. As a matter of fact, the air traffic control system the U.S. uses is based upon very old technology that doesn't account for advances in aircraft guidance systems that have been made over the years. So you're right in that sense: the big boys have been more than capable of routing and guiding themselves to their destinations for some years now. That really isn't the issue, though.
The reason you want an experienced pilot on board is for those times when things don't go right. That happens all the time, more often than you might think, and the reason there aren't more serious accidents is because somebody was there to take over and handle something the automatics couldn't. At the current state-of-the-art, I wouldn't consider boarding an jetliner that didn't have a live pilot in the cockpit.
Whether you believe that pilots make too much money (and yeah, they make a lot) is another issue entirely, and I'm sure that's all Mr. Ryan is concerned about.
I think you're right. He'd fit right in here on Slashdot: of course, he'd either get "+5 Funny" or "-5: Troll." Hard to imagine anyone taking him seriously.
Providing he and other members of the board and senior management are forced to be on every aircraft that has only one pilot, you know, to show that they stand behind what they say, I say give it a go.
I dunno... never underestimate the power of human stupidity, particularly when there's money involved. I mean, this particular board has tolerated a fruitcake as CEO for some time now.
There are good reasons for having a co-pilot. What he's really saying is that pilots salaries are (in his opinion) excessive, and he thinks he sees a cheap way out by eliminating the "unnecessary" backup pilot.
Which will work great until that pilot has a coronary at 35,000 feet.
There's nothing like the confidence that comes from a box of cards.
Basically you're saying there's nothing like a relatively stable medium made from wood. Just like books, and I agree with you. My problem was less that I would have to use punch cards, but that I would have to spend time on a mainframe. I had little interest in mainframe programming at that point: I had already decided that microprocessors were were I wanted to be.
I fail to see the difference between that and suggesting that people wear a disguise and use a fake name when they go out socially just in case the boss is an extremely nosey closet prohibitionist with way too much free time.
In principle? Very little. In practice, the convenience and ubiquity of the Web make taking some precautions worthwhile. That's the natural consequence of having such tremendous connectedness in our lives. Face it, every major technological advance since the invention of fire (and probably even before that) has offered benefits, and also had associated risks. This is no different, and those who refuse to accept that and modify their behavior accordingly tend to get burned.
Essentially you are saying that the only way to not have personal life interfere with professional is to not have a personal life.
Not at all, unless your personal life revolves solely around what you post on a Web page somewhere. What I'm saying is that, if you want to participate in social networking, take steps to make sure it doesn't interfere with your professional life. That might mean, for example, taking the very simple precaution of not using your real name on social networking sites. Take me, for instance. Do you think my real name is ScrewMaster? Sure, if someone really wants to know who I am, they can probably find out: I've been online for a long time. But here's the thing: if you know that people you'd rather not find you are trolling for you online, make it hard for them. Raise the bar. The average HR type isn't going to make a concerted effort to find you: he'll just cruise a couple of the major sites for your real name, and if he doesn't find anything, move on to the next thing.
This is not rocket science people: you just have to learn to take a few precautions. Most folks don't, I admit, until after they've been caught flatfooted.
The level of calculator use depends on the level of the student - the number of times I've seen my students reach for a calculator for simple arithmetic (9 x 13) or similar worries me that they don't truly understand what they are doing. Much of the basic arithmetic helps inform the algebra usage in later classes, which is why things like long division are still relevant. I relented and allow non-symbolic manipulation calculators for my calc classes these days after a student pointed out that their cell phones meant they have a calculator permanently available. I also make a point of assigning a problem or two that the TI-89's choke on to explain why learning the techniques directly is important.
Not a stamper. Think of a metal lathe, then porcupine it with multiple cutting tools and power feeds, to get a turret lathe. Then add even more clockwork/gearing and it can make multiple parts pretty much hands off, and you got a screw machine.
Okay. I've seen equipment like that, but the screw machines I'm familiar with (I did a lot of data acquisition work in the fastener industry, many moons ago) were basically large solenoid-operated stamping machines. Rows and rows of the things, all thumping out about three or four parts per second. They had separate dies to form the various parts of the fastener, and were fed by large spools of metal wire (steel, brass, whatever.) They were also very loud, as I remember, although not anywhere near what I experienced in a some automotive stamping plants. Earplugs for the win.
These were mostly self-tapping parts (drill screws and the like) and the systems I developed measured various attributes such as drill time, peak and tapping torque values, end-load, and so forth. This was mostly for statistical process control purposes, although I did a number of laboratory test systems as well. Those were used for design testing, as well as assessing performance of competitors' parts.
In the 1980s I had an intro to computer science class where we had to write our first programming assignment in fortran(*) using punch cards.
Back in the 1970's when I was in college, the first day of my first computer class the professor told us that "the keypunch machines are down the hall." I asked him, "uh, as in punch cards?" At that point I'd been hacking assembler code on microcomputers for a few years and doing real-world interfacing, and really wasn't interested in punch cards. Sure, had it been a one-time experience like you had, that would have been interesting. But an entire school year spent in front of a keypunch machine, submitting jobs to an IBM 370, when there were rooms full of 3270 terminals all over the place? No thanks. I dropped that class that afternoon.
Well, he does have a point. That last thing many employers want to see on a resume is more than five years of relevant experience. They simply aren't willing to pay for more than that.
i work in the metalworking trade, and many times an old screw machine can do a run of parts so much more efficiently than a cnc machine that it is used instead.
Well, if you mean by "screw machine" a machine that makes screws, well, generally they literally stamp fasteners from spools of metal wire. Much faster and more efficient than trying to machine such parts... that would be hideously slow in comparison.
Except smartass, this time Israeli spies really did land in Dubai, use Blackberries, assassinated someone and left.
Dubai police can't decrypt the messages sent by the spies.
DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM? OR ARE YOU TOO MUCH OF AN AMERIC*NT TO FIGURE IT OUT?
Yes, because of course a highly-trained and experienced Israeli hit squad couldn't have just used regular unencrypted voice telephony to complete their mission. They hardly needed Blackberries, assuming they really did what they're accused of (not saying they didn't, nor do I care for that matter.) All that will happen is that the Israelis, the next time they decide to whack someone in Dubai, won't bother using Blackberries. For that matter, now that they know the things are being monitored, they can probably use that fact for some misdirection. Consequently, this has no benefit to the UAE so far as a defense from Israeli spies is concerned. Not much good so far as internal threats go, I might add, now that everyone knows what's going on. So spare us your stupid anti-American commentary. This has nothing to do with the U.S., has nothing to do with Israel, this has to do with yet another government afraid of its own people.
DO YOU GET THAT? OR ARE YOU TOO MUCH OF AN IDIOT TO FIGURE IT OUT?
In the hands of a skilled person, including a skilled spy, anything can be useful for any purpose. Even a common orange has its place in a spy's toolkit. Do you really think that's chewing gum in his mouth?
Sorry, but US demands EU and a lot of other countries to give them access to their peoples banking, financial and all kind of other data, and don't get me even started on the NSA listening devices and backdoors on major ISP's backbones. Why is it so weird when other countries in turn demand the same kind of access? If US wants to promote privacy of citizens, at least start doing it yourself first.
Uh, Mr. Fruitbasket, you do realize that Research in Motion is a Canadian company, don't you? Plus which, in your haste to make an anti-American comment early in the thread and thus score some cheap mod points, you didn't even notice that the GP was referring to shoes.
Besides, encryption is legal in the United States. If I want to encrypt my emails, or encrypt my voice communications, it's legal for me to do so. What was your complaint again? Oh, I'm supposed to give a damn about people in other countries? Why is that our problem? Besides, if we try to make that our problem, you'll immediately come back telling us that we shouldn't be interfering with the internal affairs of another nation.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I believe that computers make fewer mistakes than humans, so I would in fact prefer a plane with a single (or no) human pilots. Before I get hit with a straw man, I am in no way saying that computers are infallible. Of course they are programmed by humans, and mistakes will be made. I am just saying that the error rate for computers is probably less than that for humans. We kinda suck at not making mistakes.
Well, what you believe doesn't matter, and computers make mistakes all the time. For example, a flight control system is affected by the external input it receives: a mechanical or electronic failure in a sensor can cause that computer to make an error even if the computer is functioning properly. In your view of things, the engineers who programmed that computer will have put in all the necessary logic to accommodate all possible failure modes, all the strange things that can happen to an aircraft in flight. Furthermore, they will have given that machine the ability to make judgment calls about situations it may never have experienced before. Having a pilot on-board is not about flying the plane to its destination: modern jetliners can do that by themselves quite nicely. It's about what happens when things go wrong, and they do so with monotonous regularity. Most such situations never make the news, because there was a pilot there who took over and handled what the automation could not.
I dunno ... never underestimate the power of human stupidity, particularly when there's money involved. I mean, this particular board has tolerated a fruitcake as CEO for some time now.
Boards don't generally view CEOs who generate huge and increasing profits, and vast quantities of free publicity, as fruitcakes.
I agree. But he's still a fruitcake.
You sacrifice safety for expediency daily. Everyone does. It isn't black and white but a gradient. I do not think it is ridiculous to suggest the advance of modern technology has made co-pilots possibly unnecessarily redundant.
Of course it hasn't, and it won't until we have a true AI to run the show. Yes, if a flight proceeds normally a modern jetliner can pretty much fly itself. As a matter of fact, the air traffic control system the U.S. uses is based upon very old technology that doesn't account for advances in aircraft guidance systems that have been made over the years. So you're right in that sense: the big boys have been more than capable of routing and guiding themselves to their destinations for some years now. That really isn't the issue, though.
The reason you want an experienced pilot on board is for those times when things don't go right. That happens all the time, more often than you might think, and the reason there aren't more serious accidents is because somebody was there to take over and handle something the automatics couldn't. At the current state-of-the-art, I wouldn't consider boarding an jetliner that didn't have a live pilot in the cockpit.
Whether you believe that pilots make too much money (and yeah, they make a lot) is another issue entirely, and I'm sure that's all Mr. Ryan is concerned about.
He is, in short, a troll.
I think you're right. He'd fit right in here on Slashdot: of course, he'd either get "+5 Funny" or "-5: Troll." Hard to imagine anyone taking him seriously.
Providing he and other members of the board and senior management are forced to be on every aircraft that has only one pilot, you know, to show that they stand behind what they say, I say give it a go.
I dunno ... never underestimate the power of human stupidity, particularly when there's money involved. I mean, this particular board has tolerated a fruitcake as CEO for some time now.
Should an emergency arise, the CEO could ring a bell and a specially trained board member could come in and take over running the company.
Yes. And that board member will have a large red, rubber nose and have huge, goofy shoes and will be named "Bozo."
I suggest sending them to sleep or maybe browsing Facebook...
Well, in the U.S., FAA rules prevent pilots from taking naps, I understand. Not sure about Facebook though.
There are good reasons for having a co-pilot. What he's really saying is that pilots salaries are (in his opinion) excessive, and he thinks he sees a cheap way out by eliminating the "unnecessary" backup pilot.
Which will work great until that pilot has a coronary at 35,000 feet.
And I thought you guys trusted FCC
We do?
There's nothing like the confidence that comes from a box of cards.
Basically you're saying there's nothing like a relatively stable medium made from wood. Just like books, and I agree with you. My problem was less that I would have to use punch cards, but that I would have to spend time on a mainframe. I had little interest in mainframe programming at that point: I had already decided that microprocessors were were I wanted to be.
I fail to see the difference between that and suggesting that people wear a disguise and use a fake name when they go out socially just in case the boss is an extremely nosey closet prohibitionist with way too much free time.
In principle? Very little. In practice, the convenience and ubiquity of the Web make taking some precautions worthwhile. That's the natural consequence of having such tremendous connectedness in our lives. Face it, every major technological advance since the invention of fire (and probably even before that) has offered benefits, and also had associated risks. This is no different, and those who refuse to accept that and modify their behavior accordingly tend to get burned.
Essentially you are saying that the only way to not have personal life interfere with professional is to not have a personal life.
Not at all, unless your personal life revolves solely around what you post on a Web page somewhere. What I'm saying is that, if you want to participate in social networking, take steps to make sure it doesn't interfere with your professional life. That might mean, for example, taking the very simple precaution of not using your real name on social networking sites. Take me, for instance. Do you think my real name is ScrewMaster? Sure, if someone really wants to know who I am, they can probably find out: I've been online for a long time. But here's the thing: if you know that people you'd rather not find you are trolling for you online, make it hard for them. Raise the bar. The average HR type isn't going to make a concerted effort to find you: he'll just cruise a couple of the major sites for your real name, and if he doesn't find anything, move on to the next thing.
This is not rocket science people: you just have to learn to take a few precautions. Most folks don't, I admit, until after they've been caught flatfooted.
The level of calculator use depends on the level of the student - the number of times I've seen my students reach for a calculator for simple arithmetic (9 x 13) or similar worries me that they don't truly understand what they are doing. Much of the basic arithmetic helps inform the algebra usage in later classes, which is why things like long division are still relevant. I relented and allow non-symbolic manipulation calculators for my calc classes these days after a student pointed out that their cell phones meant they have a calculator permanently available. I also make a point of assigning a problem or two that the TI-89's choke on to explain why learning the techniques directly is important.
Okay. I'll buy that.
There had to have been paperwork (for the "wrist slap"), and probably some media coverage, and that allowed things to proceed to the next level.
Okay, I think we're in agreement then.
Terminals were plentiful around campus but CIS wouldn't let people use them.
Interesting. Sounds like the same mindset that wouldn't let students use pocket calculators.
Not a stamper. Think of a metal lathe, then porcupine it with multiple cutting tools and power feeds, to get a turret lathe. Then add even more clockwork/gearing and it can make multiple parts pretty much hands off, and you got a screw machine.
Okay. I've seen equipment like that, but the screw machines I'm familiar with (I did a lot of data acquisition work in the fastener industry, many moons ago) were basically large solenoid-operated stamping machines. Rows and rows of the things, all thumping out about three or four parts per second. They had separate dies to form the various parts of the fastener, and were fed by large spools of metal wire (steel, brass, whatever.) They were also very loud, as I remember, although not anywhere near what I experienced in a some automotive stamping plants. Earplugs for the win.
These were mostly self-tapping parts (drill screws and the like) and the systems I developed measured various attributes such as drill time, peak and tapping torque values, end-load, and so forth. This was mostly for statistical process control purposes, although I did a number of laboratory test systems as well. Those were used for design testing, as well as assessing performance of competitors' parts.
In the 1980s I had an intro to computer science class where we had to write our first programming assignment in fortran(*) using punch cards.
Back in the 1970's when I was in college, the first day of my first computer class the professor told us that "the keypunch machines are down the hall." I asked him, "uh, as in punch cards?" At that point I'd been hacking assembler code on microcomputers for a few years and doing real-world interfacing, and really wasn't interested in punch cards. Sure, had it been a one-time experience like you had, that would have been interesting. But an entire school year spent in front of a keypunch machine, submitting jobs to an IBM 370, when there were rooms full of 3270 terminals all over the place? No thanks. I dropped that class that afternoon.
If you have not made it to management
Spoken like a true fucktard.
Well, he does have a point. That last thing many employers want to see on a resume is more than five years of relevant experience. They simply aren't willing to pay for more than that.
i work in the metalworking trade, and many times an old screw machine can do a run of parts so much more efficiently than a cnc machine that it is used instead.
Well, if you mean by "screw machine" a machine that makes screws, well, generally they literally stamp fasteners from spools of metal wire. Much faster and more efficient than trying to machine such parts ... that would be hideously slow in comparison.
but material such as "I torture animals", and "omg, my crack habit is way out of control" would probably weigh somewhat negatively.
Somewhat negatively? I suppose there are a few jobs where animal torturers and crack addicts would fit in, but not many.
Except smartass, this time Israeli spies really did land in Dubai, use Blackberries, assassinated someone and left.
Dubai police can't decrypt the messages sent by the spies.
DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM? OR ARE YOU TOO MUCH OF AN AMERIC*NT TO FIGURE IT OUT?
Yes, because of course a highly-trained and experienced Israeli hit squad couldn't have just used regular unencrypted voice telephony to complete their mission. They hardly needed Blackberries, assuming they really did what they're accused of (not saying they didn't, nor do I care for that matter.) All that will happen is that the Israelis, the next time they decide to whack someone in Dubai, won't bother using Blackberries. For that matter, now that they know the things are being monitored, they can probably use that fact for some misdirection. Consequently, this has no benefit to the UAE so far as a defense from Israeli spies is concerned. Not much good so far as internal threats go, I might add, now that everyone knows what's going on. So spare us your stupid anti-American commentary. This has nothing to do with the U.S., has nothing to do with Israel, this has to do with yet another government afraid of its own people.
DO YOU GET THAT? OR ARE YOU TOO MUCH OF AN IDIOT TO FIGURE IT OUT?
Rhetorical question.
In the hands of a skilled person, including a skilled spy, anything can be useful for any purpose. Even a common orange has its place in a spy's toolkit. Do you really think that's chewing gum in his mouth?
Even Paris Hilton has 'Special' gum....
Yes, and she is glad to see you.
yes; I have seen the contract documents.
I will re-iterate the GP's comment: Oh really, and you have proof of it in this instance?!
... some A.C. on Slashdot saying he saw documents. Meaningless.
Saying you've seen documents is not proof. It's just
sorry, my shoe is ringing.
Ohhhh, Max.
Sorry, but US demands EU and a lot of other countries to give them access to their peoples banking, financial and all kind of other data, and don't get me even started on the NSA listening devices and backdoors on major ISP's backbones. Why is it so weird when other countries in turn demand the same kind of access? If US wants to promote privacy of citizens, at least start doing it yourself first.
Uh, Mr. Fruitbasket, you do realize that Research in Motion is a Canadian company, don't you? Plus which, in your haste to make an anti-American comment early in the thread and thus score some cheap mod points, you didn't even notice that the GP was referring to shoes.
Besides, encryption is legal in the United States. If I want to encrypt my emails, or encrypt my voice communications, it's legal for me to do so. What was your complaint again? Oh, I'm supposed to give a damn about people in other countries? Why is that our problem? Besides, if we try to make that our problem, you'll immediately come back telling us that we shouldn't be interfering with the internal affairs of another nation.
Make up your goddamn mind.