Show me where controller error caused an air crash and I'll wager I can find 10 instances of pilot error or non-recoverable equipment failure causing the same.
What did all of those taxi drivers do before taxis? What did the accountants do before the income tax? My read of history is that there will be short-term pain, but ultimately people will move into jobs that take advantage of our reduced need to spend time producing necessities.
You are already depending on the ground controllers to keep the planes from slamming into one another. To say they have no "skin in the game" is only true if they are sociopaths. Most people would not recover from the mental anguish of killing hundreds of innocent people.
"Footfall" dealt with this somewhat. The alien invaders posses technology that they did not invent themselves, but rather deciphered from tablets (Thuktunthp) left behind by a previous species that knew they were dying out.
As soon as you say "Subaru", we know it will be a weird controls story... they are the Volkswagen (or maybe SAAB?) of Japan:)
My brother's old Golf wouldn't open the fuel door unless you used the electronic unlock to unlock all of the doors. Really weird. It took me and the gas station attendant a few minutes before we finally gave up and looked in the manual.
I'm sure that there is room for improvement (it can't help that they change direction every administration), but they do a lot more pure science than they did in the 60s. And the pound-your-chest stuff of the 60s is mostly gone, with even the manned program going in the direction of "jump start the private sector". I'm much happier with the Space X style contracts than I am with the 60s model of in-house development, even if that might have been necessary to achieve the goal of beating the Soviets.
I was of that generation. I grew up with an Apple IIe. My first Mac was in college - I had a Centris 650 and it was very nice. Then I got a PowerBook 5300cs, and the only nice thing I can say about it was that Apple kept fixing it, eventually extending the warranty for 7 years IIRC. After that debacle, my next computer was a cheap PC (Cyrix processor!). Ever since, I've gone with a mix of Macs and PCs.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
That's as much a condemnation of the educational establishment as anything else. In 1987 when I was 12 I wrote a spelling program for the 4th grade teacher and showed her how to modify the vocabulary list. It was a laughably simple program, but she could put kids on it and they would get the equivalent of 1 on 1 education. It took a 12-year-old kid to write a lame program in order for the computers in her classroom to be useful... at least she had the initiative to ask me for help - most teachers wouldn't bother.
And this is when the personal computer had been around for roughly 10 years. I don't know what they do with computers these days, but I'm sure they are just as underused. My kids' school district has a "language lab" with thousands of dollars worth of software sitting unused because the idiot school district can't afford the "sanitizable" headphones. When I suggested they buy dollar store headphones and issue them to every student they said that would be "unmanageable" because the students would lose them. Oy.
I can't speculate on their "real" reasons for selection, but I think it doesn't take much research to find examples of things going very wrong in space. I have been in situations with people where they reacted quite badly, so I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.
You are right, people starting new companies shouldn't have to grovel to these idiots. There should be a public fund that goes to worthy companies. And to make sure that we give the money to the right people, we'll put a panel of experts together to judge the merits of these startups. We'll have to pay the panel members extremely well, so that they don't get corrupted or bribed. Now, there's a few powerful congressmen who have some brothers-in-law who happen to be scientists, and they would be a perfect fit for this panel. I'm sure they will be more responsible with this taxpayer money than rich guys investing their own money.
I gather that they know what they are doing, but I imagine that "makes decisions well while under pressure" might be a pretty big criteria that might already be tested in a military pilot.
And the real progress has been SpaceX which didn't start till about 11 years ago.
Agreed - and I'd add the stubborn refusal to rethink the shuttle was even more wasteful. I mean, they built a whole fleet of those darned things even when it was clear that they weren't going to perform as originally hoped. I give NASA a pass on the 50s and 60s, though - that was more of a pissing match and less of a "let's boot an industry" thinking.
I take issue with your characterization of funding, though - NASA spending went way down compared to the rest of our spending. It's clearly not the priority it was for us in the 60s.
I think the way NASA is encouraging these newer non-defense space companies is a refreshing change of pace. I hope they continue with that strategy. I'd like to see more goal-oriented funding. Even just throw stuff out there that seems crazy - like another Hubble servicing mission. Make the rules very open - who cares how they do it, manned or robotic - if you successfully service Hubble, here's a half-billion dollars... have at it!
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Show me where controller error caused an air crash and I'll wager I can find 10 instances of pilot error or non-recoverable equipment failure causing the same.
There are also more jobs in non-subsistence farming work than there has ever been.
What did all of those taxi drivers do before taxis? What did the accountants do before the income tax? My read of history is that there will be short-term pain, but ultimately people will move into jobs that take advantage of our reduced need to spend time producing necessities.
You are already depending on the ground controllers to keep the planes from slamming into one another. To say they have no "skin in the game" is only true if they are sociopaths. Most people would not recover from the mental anguish of killing hundreds of innocent people.
"Footfall" dealt with this somewhat. The alien invaders posses technology that they did not invent themselves, but rather deciphered from tablets (Thuktunthp) left behind by a previous species that knew they were dying out.
Wrong kind of quantum computer. This does quantum annealing.
Why would a quantum annealer help break encryption? Isn't that a different field of quantum problem (factoring)?
But Google's Blogger service isn't anything close to a monopoly.
Put up is one option. Shut up is the other option.
And a third option is to shit on the troll instead of throwing food over the bridge.
If that were the case, he wouldn't be ranting about it on his blog, and we wouldn't have a story.
Unless he's calculated that he can get more out of them if he turns the screws a bit.
As soon as you say "Subaru", we know it will be a weird controls story... they are the Volkswagen (or maybe SAAB?) of Japan :)
My brother's old Golf wouldn't open the fuel door unless you used the electronic unlock to unlock all of the doors. Really weird. It took me and the gas station attendant a few minutes before we finally gave up and looked in the manual.
Don't most cars have an arrow on the gas gauge?
We should require labels that say it contains quantum modified chips.
I'm sure that there is room for improvement (it can't help that they change direction every administration), but they do a lot more pure science than they did in the 60s. And the pound-your-chest stuff of the 60s is mostly gone, with even the manned program going in the direction of "jump start the private sector". I'm much happier with the Space X style contracts than I am with the 60s model of in-house development, even if that might have been necessary to achieve the goal of beating the Soviets.
Wow, thankyou, I was really struggling over that sentance.
I was of that generation. I grew up with an Apple IIe. My first Mac was in college - I had a Centris 650 and it was very nice. Then I got a PowerBook 5300cs, and the only nice thing I can say about it was that Apple kept fixing it, eventually extending the warranty for 7 years IIRC. After that debacle, my next computer was a cheap PC (Cyrix processor!). Ever since, I've gone with a mix of Macs and PCs.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
That's why I worship him instead of Jesus.
That's as much a condemnation of the educational establishment as anything else. In 1987 when I was 12 I wrote a spelling program for the 4th grade teacher and showed her how to modify the vocabulary list. It was a laughably simple program, but she could put kids on it and they would get the equivalent of 1 on 1 education. It took a 12-year-old kid to write a lame program in order for the computers in her classroom to be useful... at least she had the initiative to ask me for help - most teachers wouldn't bother.
And this is when the personal computer had been around for roughly 10 years. I don't know what they do with computers these days, but I'm sure they are just as underused. My kids' school district has a "language lab" with thousands of dollars worth of software sitting unused because the idiot school district can't afford the "sanitizable" headphones. When I suggested they buy dollar store headphones and issue them to every student they said that would be "unmanageable" because the students would lose them. Oy.
Well, it's kind of a separate discussion, but personally I support efforts to keep man in space.
I think you need to finish reading my comment :)
OK, but humans are by definition still in the manned spaceflight program.
I can't speculate on their "real" reasons for selection, but I think it doesn't take much research to find examples of things going very wrong in space. I have been in situations with people where they reacted quite badly, so I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.
You are right, people starting new companies shouldn't have to grovel to these idiots. There should be a public fund that goes to worthy companies. And to make sure that we give the money to the right people, we'll put a panel of experts together to judge the merits of these startups. We'll have to pay the panel members extremely well, so that they don't get corrupted or bribed. Now, there's a few powerful congressmen who have some brothers-in-law who happen to be scientists, and they would be a perfect fit for this panel. I'm sure they will be more responsible with this taxpayer money than rich guys investing their own money.
I gather that they know what they are doing, but I imagine that "makes decisions well while under pressure" might be a pretty big criteria that might already be tested in a military pilot.
It's not anywhere near Apollo levels - it took an enormous dive after Apollo and has trended down ever since.
And the real progress has been SpaceX which didn't start till about 11 years ago.
Agreed - and I'd add the stubborn refusal to rethink the shuttle was even more wasteful. I mean, they built a whole fleet of those darned things even when it was clear that they weren't going to perform as originally hoped. I give NASA a pass on the 50s and 60s, though - that was more of a pissing match and less of a "let's boot an industry" thinking.
I take issue with your characterization of funding, though - NASA spending went way down compared to the rest of our spending. It's clearly not the priority it was for us in the 60s.
I think the way NASA is encouraging these newer non-defense space companies is a refreshing change of pace. I hope they continue with that strategy. I'd like to see more goal-oriented funding. Even just throw stuff out there that seems crazy - like another Hubble servicing mission. Make the rules very open - who cares how they do it, manned or robotic - if you successfully service Hubble, here's a half-billion dollars... have at it!