In my mind this is symptomatic of the corporate life in the higher echelons. Basically, these people at the top don't have te requisite life experience, or call it wisdom, or even common sense, to act like adults. Corporate life to these people is nothing more than a replay of high school. They're scheming, pulling pranks, cheating, and generally making stuff up as they go along.
You say that as if they're a fundamentally different type of human. Maybe they are: maybe only sociopaths rise to that level. But maybe if you or I were on that board, in that situation, and had done all the things it takes to have gotten that far, it'd seem, at the time, like a completely reasonable action, or maybe it's just that the apparent risk/reward was worth it. I don't see this as being fundamentally different than speeding through a school zone ("because I'm late and nobody will get hurt") or shoplifting a pack of chewing gum ("it's so cheap nobody will care") or any other tragedy-of-the-commons behavior.
Yeah, the behavior sucks, yeah it's unethical, yeah it's easy to condemn, but it's the behavior pattern you'd expect from aggressive, competitive, intelligent animals.
See, that's exactly my question: is there any relationship between public perception of the value of honesty, and corporate behavior? Right now, in the wake of Enron/Tyco, and in the middle of stock options pricing, it's less likely people are going to be cooking the books because they know they're being watched more carefully: the risk/reward ratio isn't favorable. There's an old sayings, that each President fights wars with the previous President's army: there's a hysteresis. I'm wondering if the same thing happens with stuff like wiretapping (or, more to the point, if anyone has facts showing that it does, because human nature makes it pretty likely.) William Hearst did things like this all the time: it's as old as attempting secure communication (for obvious reasons.) But you have to figure that the people trying to find out who was leaking stuff to CNET were thinking, either consciously or unconsciously, that the public seems to be accepting wiretapping/eavesdropping for THAT cause, so what would it hurt to do a smaller bit of call tracing for THIS one?
I thought it was interesting that finding leaks, and their relative importance, was cited as a major reason for Carly Fiorino's departure -- she thought they were important, the rest of the board didn't (or, maybe, they were concerned about performance and she was concerned about finding something other than performance to distract their attention.)
It's also interesting to wonder whether leak-fixing/spying on fellow board members is more likely to happen in the wake of the increasing publicity surrounding NSA wiretapping. I wonder if this was also going on during the Nixon era -- is there a correlation between government willingness to spy on its own, and corporate willingness to do so? (Obviously corps are always willing to spy on the Little People, but I'm talking about corp officers, which is a little bit more personal.)
A recent MAKE issue (#6, I believe?) had an article about beefing up LEGO. They have some how-to stuff on using metal shafts and bearings, hardware-interfacing radiocontrol servos to LEGO, and the like. As other people said, there are still some Technic pieces out there. I'm trying to build an automated heavy-duty chainmail spotwelder out of LEGO and my old arc-welder-turns-to-spotwelder. It's very technic-heavy but I'm going to have to use metal chain (and cogs, with hardware interface) for some parts.
One problem with packratting is that if you're not using the genes encoded by DNA, they drift. Well, they drift ANYWAY, but if you're using drifted genes you probably die (or are suddenly more suitable for an environment and outcompete other organisms there.) But unused or underused genes drift until they're no longer useful/competitive (for that specific purpose, but may be for a wholly different purpose.) Which is a major evolutionary strategy (insofar as there can be strategies in an unplanned system.) The drifted genes can then do something wholly different -- something that used to form a cell-membrane-spanning channel for allowing ions in and out, can suddenly become a part of the immune system that produces uncontrolled leaks in foreign cells' cell membranes, killing them (which is probably how our killer t-cells derived part of their cell-killing repertoire.)
And, really, this sort of ambiguity and shift-of-functionality is a large part of why it's so hard to give a quick, convincing summary of evolution (because of all the parenthetical clarifications and explanations.)
Reading your item #3 made me think of what Darwin and Wallace were originally working on. Their thought experiments basically went: if you have a population that is in competition for a resource, some of the population will starve and some will prosper. Those that prosper will successfully raise more kids. If you accept the idea that traits are inherited, evolution follows.
From that general summary, follows the ideas of ecological niches, differentiation when new niches present themselves, and a host of other ideas. But fundamentally it's all about competition for limited resources, which is something everyone understands.
This is only somewhat on-subject but in humans there are (at least) three different kinds of hypoxia, only one of which is actual hypoxic hypoxia. No, seriously, that's what it's called. That's where there's not enough air to breathe. But there's also hypemic or anemic hypoxia, where there's enough air but your blood can't carry it, for lack of red blood cells or malfunctioning red blood cells, and histotoxic anemia, where your blood could carry it but the cells on the other end have something wrong with them so they're individually asphyxiating. You see these latter sorts of situations with smokers, drinkers, or people with strange diseases. Sickle-cell anemia, frinstance, is a situation where the cells change shape (to a sickle) under low oxygen pressure: a type of hypoxia. So while their sentence seems redundant, there are situations where just saying 'hypoxia' doesn't actually tell you what you might want to know, and doesn't necessarily mean 'not enough oxygen in the surroundings.'
>Do you honestly think that if you take away the incentives to *get rich and famous* that there will be better movies and albums?
Piffle. Sophocles wrote some truly amazing plays. Michelangelo made some truly gorgeous sculptures. 2000 years apart, and neither had copyright protection. Didn't stop them making art that makes anything produced in the last 400 years of copyright protection look pretty lame. For all of recorded history and plenty of unrecorded history -- like cave art in France -- people have been making beautiful artwork. You're claiming that suddenly, after 20,000 years of making beautiful art, people are going to stop, just because other people can copy them? Ridiculous. Now if you're claiming that a small group of people who stand to make millions of dollars releasing crappy pop tunes are going to stop if everyone can copy their work, well, then you're probably right, and the faster that happens, the better. However, claiming that without copyright protection people will stop creating art is like claiming that if you charge people for air they'll stop breathing.
I have a very similar symptom but in my case it's somewhere in the guts of my Qwest DSL modem. I can ping anywhere but sometimes, randomly, it'll stop resolving DNS *and* ip addresses, and I have to go cycle power on it. Stupid thing. What's kind of odd is that it happens about 6 hours to several days earlier on the Windows machine than on the 2 linux machines: they're still chugging along well after Windows starts saying it can't find google.com. (and sometimes if I'm really lucky it'll be able to find IP addresses but not be able to find names, so I've gotten good at memorizing big sites' ip addresses.) Stupid quest dsl modems.
And what's a little funny is that Wolf Creek isn't even particularly hairy compared to Argentine Pass (13,200') or Black Bear or Pearl or Schofield Passes. I've ridden my road bike over wolf creek several times; I had to do some rock climbing to walk Argentine.
There are a lot of those running around. There are two here in Denver, Colorado, and I've seen them in California and Oregon. The coolest one I've ever seen was in Christchurch, NZ: it was dual-ended. Both the front and rear were VW front ends. It was really spooky. One of the ones here in Denver I've seen over a period of three years, so I'm guessing nobody has a problem with it.
So you're getting to fly turbine? Wow. Envy, envy! I've never gotten anywhere near that, and I don't think I probably ever will.
I believe Hollman built himself a special version of the Stallion with the fold-down ramp, although it should be possible to do something similar using a side-loading ramp if you were willing to run a bit less motorcycle. I've taken mountain bikes in a 172: cozy, to say the least. I wonder about putting a vespa-size scooter in there.
Clearly, given the dumbass response to the WTC crashes (jets like what was used grounded for 6 days, GA grounded for several months) the equally dumbass public is vastly more likely to want GA grounded than to want to have to FedEx their baggage, so I expect that GA will indeed be grounded aside from training, before baggage is banned: security theatre.
In the meantime, let's be optimists. New planes are ridiculously expensive, even in the light sport arena. Used Cessnas and older Pipers, maybe not so bad. But take a look at kitplanes. You can build a KR2 for under $15,000, or a Wag-Aero reproduction of a Piper PA-12/14/18 (depending on what you want.) There's stuff you can build in under 300 hours, there are very fast piston singles, maybe even jets. That's where the innovation future is.
Any plane has two coefficients: Vx and Vy. One is the maximum climb speed, and one is the max climb rate. That seems a bit weird, but it comes out of the math: Vx means you can get *to* an altitude quickly, at a lower angle of climb, and Vy means you can *climb* at a high angle. As the altitude increases these two get closer until they meet, at which point the aircraft can no longer climb.
With that said, all planes suffer from increasing stall speed with altitude. Now what I don't know is whether the operational ceiling, determined by the intersection of Vx and Vy, might sometimes be lower than 'coffin corner' or whether it's always higher, that you always run into Vne running into Vs1 -- but I'll do some reading about it and see if I can get a good answer.
And yeah, you're basically exactly right. Once you push yourself into the corner the only way out is to reduce power and nose-down at the same time; any other range of inputs (bank, climb, just nose-down, just reduce-power) runs into one or the other limitation.
Airline hospitality has been a nod to a more elegant time for the last two decades; I suspect this will provide the justification to dispose of it entirely, or at least start charging for it, if people can no longer bring a substitute.
I'm sure takeoff weight is the same as landing weight: for most light aircraft the assumption is the only weight lost during flight is fuel unless you're a jump plane or very unlucky.
I generally assume fuel weighs 5.9-6.2 pounds per gallon, depending on the temp. Jet A weighs 6.8 pounds per gallon, though. I don't know where you're flying from, but most of the places I hang out, the difference in price between Jet A and 100LL is not very much, and less if I have an engine that can burn automobile gasoline.
Yeah, the payload is pretty poor. I got interested in that plane because the designer put a ramp in the back of his and would fly from airport to airport with a Honda motorcycle in the back, which is pretty cool, but not very efficient from a passenger seat/mile/gallon standpoint. Also, yes, his numbers reflect that all 6 passengers want to go somewhere, rather than just 'paying' passengers (even though of course you can't use a homebuilt for commercial operations.)
My point being: this thing rivals a 747 for efficiency, and it costs about 1/1000 as much, and that wasn't even what it was designed for. Building a plane that is actually usable for commercial operations will probably cost 10x what this does (and puts it right in the range of the VLJs) but for short-hop flights, that still might be viable, *especially* if you start looking at time savings on the ground. Many people will forgive a slower cruise if they don't spend as much time waiting in line. (Witness people driving on surface streets to avoid a traffic jam: they'd rather feel like they're still progressing, just slowly.)
I think it's fairly likely that within ten years we won't be carrying passenger baggage on commercial aircraft: laws will be passed and most/all personal baggage will be shipped via cargo carriers. I may be wrong. But if that happened it would speed up the security lines, helping airlines process people faster (which is one reason I think it might happen.) It would also boost VLJ/lightplane operations.
Minor terminology correction from a pilot: Vne (velocity never-exceed) approaches Vs1 (velocity stall, clean configuration.) At the point where those cross, you're simultaneously ripping the wings off while stalling. (0r would be if the plane did actually come apart at Vne: one presumes there's a bit of safety margin, although you'll probably exceed that after the stall.)
>Government officials aren't reacting out of common sense, they are reacting out of irrational fear.
I don't think so. I think they're acting out of the entirely rational fear that if they don't do every single thing possible, ban every possible hazardous object, that there will be a public uproar, they'll get sued, that they'll be found responsible for the attack. This is the backside of government-as-protector: that if you don't do everything you can (to restrict other people's freedom, basically) that you'll be found negligent and liable. In a way it's a tragedy-of-the-commons: you cannot afford to take the chance that you'll be singled out for catastrophic reprisal by an outraged (and not-very-deeply-thinking) public, so you have to restrict as much freedom as you can, to stay up with the other people who are doing the same thing. It's a race to the bottom.
Big jets are very efficient iff they're filled. When you're flying half-full jets you're wasting a lot of fuel. To the best of my knowledge, Martin Hollman's Super Stallion, a six-passenger fast piston airplane, is nearly twice as efficient as a 747 if both have all their seats full. Not just a little: almost twice as efficient. I question the use of VLJ's for efficient mass transport, but a large fleet of comparatively inexpensive, well-designed piston aircraft could do a good job of replacing a lot of domestic air travel. Given that the FAA estimates it's faster to drive than fly via big commercial airlines for flights under 500 miles (variable distance, depending on how long security takes: it's probably more like 700 miles currently) being able to drive to a local/regional airport and go through security with the other four people on your flight, might be both more efficient *and* faster, and has lower security/danger implications for the country as a whole. An 1800 pound plane isn't even going to get through a brick wall if it were crashed purposely. James Fallows wrote a (slightly date) book about this called "Free Flight". It's an interesting read.
We're USING the name. (For what, precisely, I can't tell you. It's, uh, a matter of National Security.) I suggest you go after Wyoming instead. Nobody lives in Wyoming, at least nobody worth talking about.
I haven't gotten to look at the page (don't browse outside slashdot from work, and home is offline right now) so I didn't realize the prices were that low. That's more than tempting. Thank you very much for the link and review. At that price, I can actually sell several boxes for $50 to local used computer stores and buy a couple.
Your sarcasm may be a little funny, but entirely misplaced. A metal bar with two pointy bits that poke keys, attached to a solenoid, would take, oh, fifteen minutes to make, and would simultaneously push keys on two keyboards at equal rates. "Robot" doesn't mean "positronic brain, bilaterally symmetric, humanoid, dances like J.Lo" -- it can mean 'a machine that does the work of a human.'
Yeah, see, there's the tradeoff. On the one side, I have free (essentially) loud power-hungry old K2-350's, and on the other I have very expensive, quiet power-efficient new VIA and ARM machines. I'll sit down and do a cost/benefit, but I'm probably going to end up staying with my current old systems. I have an IPCop machine downstairs, acting as my firewall/NAT. It has a fanless 486. It cost nothing (I found it on a curb) and has been chugging along for 5 years doing a great job and sucking up quite a bit of power. It's hard to imagine that a new low-power system would be cheaper unless my electricity rates go through the roof.
Could you recommend a source/supplier for what you're looking at? It sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. I've looked at fanless ARM-based systems but they're not cheap and not easy to set up (I'm told.)
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In my mind this is symptomatic of the corporate life in the higher echelons. Basically, these people at the top don't have te requisite life experience, or call it wisdom, or even common sense, to act like adults. Corporate life to these people is nothing more than a replay of high school. They're scheming, pulling pranks, cheating, and generally making stuff up as they go along.
You say that as if they're a fundamentally different type of human. Maybe they are: maybe only sociopaths rise to that level. But maybe if you or I were on that board, in that situation, and had done all the things it takes to have gotten that far, it'd seem, at the time, like a completely reasonable action, or maybe it's just that the apparent risk/reward was worth it. I don't see this as being fundamentally different than speeding through a school zone ("because I'm late and nobody will get hurt") or shoplifting a pack of chewing gum ("it's so cheap nobody will care") or any other tragedy-of-the-commons behavior.
Yeah, the behavior sucks, yeah it's unethical, yeah it's easy to condemn, but it's the behavior pattern you'd expect from aggressive, competitive, intelligent animals.
See, that's exactly my question: is there any relationship between public perception of the value of honesty, and corporate behavior? Right now, in the wake of Enron/Tyco, and in the middle of stock options pricing, it's less likely people are going to be cooking the books because they know they're being watched more carefully: the risk/reward ratio isn't favorable. There's an old sayings, that each President fights wars with the previous President's army: there's a hysteresis. I'm wondering if the same thing happens with stuff like wiretapping (or, more to the point, if anyone has facts showing that it does, because human nature makes it pretty likely.) William Hearst did things like this all the time: it's as old as attempting secure communication (for obvious reasons.) But you have to figure that the people trying to find out who was leaking stuff to CNET were thinking, either consciously or unconsciously, that the public seems to be accepting wiretapping/eavesdropping for THAT cause, so what would it hurt to do a smaller bit of call tracing for THIS one?
I thought it was interesting that finding leaks, and their relative importance, was cited as a major reason for Carly Fiorino's departure -- she thought they were important, the rest of the board didn't (or, maybe, they were concerned about performance and she was concerned about finding something other than performance to distract their attention.) It's also interesting to wonder whether leak-fixing/spying on fellow board members is more likely to happen in the wake of the increasing publicity surrounding NSA wiretapping. I wonder if this was also going on during the Nixon era -- is there a correlation between government willingness to spy on its own, and corporate willingness to do so? (Obviously corps are always willing to spy on the Little People, but I'm talking about corp officers, which is a little bit more personal.)
What sort of TBC did you get? I have an Amiga or two...
A recent MAKE issue (#6, I believe?) had an article about beefing up LEGO. They have some how-to stuff on using metal shafts and bearings, hardware-interfacing radiocontrol servos to LEGO, and the like.
As other people said, there are still some Technic pieces out there.
I'm trying to build an automated heavy-duty chainmail spotwelder out of LEGO and my old arc-welder-turns-to-spotwelder. It's very technic-heavy but I'm going to have to use metal chain (and cogs, with hardware interface) for some parts.
One problem with packratting is that if you're not using the genes encoded by DNA, they drift. Well, they drift ANYWAY, but if you're using drifted genes you probably die (or are suddenly more suitable for an environment and outcompete other organisms there.) But unused or underused genes drift until they're no longer useful/competitive (for that specific purpose, but may be for a wholly different purpose.) Which is a major evolutionary strategy (insofar as there can be strategies in an unplanned system.) The drifted genes can then do something wholly different -- something that used to form a cell-membrane-spanning channel for allowing ions in and out, can suddenly become a part of the immune system that produces uncontrolled leaks in foreign cells' cell membranes, killing them (which is probably how our killer t-cells derived part of their cell-killing repertoire.)
And, really, this sort of ambiguity and shift-of-functionality is a large part of why it's so hard to give a quick, convincing summary of evolution (because of all the parenthetical clarifications and explanations.)
That's a lovely summary.
Reading your item #3 made me think of what Darwin and Wallace were originally working on. Their thought experiments basically went: if you have a population that is in competition for a resource, some of the population will starve and some will prosper. Those that prosper will successfully raise more kids. If you accept the idea that traits are inherited, evolution follows.
From that general summary, follows the ideas of ecological niches, differentiation when new niches present themselves, and a host of other ideas. But fundamentally it's all about competition for limited resources, which is something everyone understands.
This is only somewhat on-subject but in humans there are (at least) three different kinds of hypoxia, only one of which is actual hypoxic hypoxia. No, seriously, that's what it's called. That's where there's not enough air to breathe. But there's also hypemic or anemic hypoxia, where there's enough air but your blood can't carry it, for lack of red blood cells or malfunctioning red blood cells, and histotoxic anemia, where your blood could carry it but the cells on the other end have something wrong with them so they're individually asphyxiating. You see these latter sorts of situations with smokers, drinkers, or people with strange diseases. Sickle-cell anemia, frinstance, is a situation where the cells change shape (to a sickle) under low oxygen pressure: a type of hypoxia.
So while their sentence seems redundant, there are situations where just saying 'hypoxia' doesn't actually tell you what you might want to know, and doesn't necessarily mean 'not enough oxygen in the surroundings.'
>Do you honestly think that if you take away the incentives to *get rich and famous* that there will be better movies and albums?
Piffle.
Sophocles wrote some truly amazing plays. Michelangelo made some truly gorgeous sculptures. 2000 years apart, and neither had copyright protection. Didn't stop them making art that makes anything produced in the last 400 years of copyright protection look pretty lame. For all of recorded history and plenty of unrecorded history -- like cave art in France -- people have been making beautiful artwork. You're claiming that suddenly, after 20,000 years of making beautiful art, people are going to stop, just because other people can copy them?
Ridiculous.
Now if you're claiming that a small group of people who stand to make millions of dollars releasing crappy pop tunes are going to stop if everyone can copy their work, well, then you're probably right, and the faster that happens, the better.
However, claiming that without copyright protection people will stop creating art is like claiming that if you charge people for air they'll stop breathing.
I have a very similar symptom but in my case it's somewhere in the guts of my Qwest DSL modem. I can ping anywhere but sometimes, randomly, it'll stop resolving DNS *and* ip addresses, and I have to go cycle power on it. Stupid thing. What's kind of odd is that it happens about 6 hours to several days earlier on the Windows machine than on the 2 linux machines: they're still chugging along well after Windows starts saying it can't find google.com. (and sometimes if I'm really lucky it'll be able to find IP addresses but not be able to find names, so I've gotten good at memorizing big sites' ip addresses.)
Stupid quest dsl modems.
And what's a little funny is that Wolf Creek isn't even particularly hairy compared to Argentine Pass (13,200') or Black Bear or Pearl or Schofield Passes. I've ridden my road bike over wolf creek several times; I had to do some rock climbing to walk Argentine.
There are a lot of those running around. There are two here in Denver, Colorado, and I've seen them in California and Oregon.
The coolest one I've ever seen was in Christchurch, NZ: it was dual-ended. Both the front and rear were VW front ends. It was really spooky.
One of the ones here in Denver I've seen over a period of three years, so I'm guessing nobody has a problem with it.
Wouldn't this be in the MAKES-PERFECT-SENSE-TO-ME dept?
I've always loved the name for the rhetorical device of trying to convince someone you're right by use of all-upper-case letters: reducto ad capslock.
So you're getting to fly turbine? Wow. Envy, envy! I've never gotten anywhere near that, and I don't think I probably ever will.
I believe Hollman built himself a special version of the Stallion with the fold-down ramp, although it should be possible to do something similar using a side-loading ramp if you were willing to run a bit less motorcycle. I've taken mountain bikes in a 172: cozy, to say the least. I wonder about putting a vespa-size scooter in there.
Clearly, given the dumbass response to the WTC crashes (jets like what was used grounded for 6 days, GA grounded for several months) the equally dumbass public is vastly more likely to want GA grounded than to want to have to FedEx their baggage, so I expect that GA will indeed be grounded aside from training, before baggage is banned: security theatre.
In the meantime, let's be optimists. New planes are ridiculously expensive, even in the light sport arena. Used Cessnas and older Pipers, maybe not so bad. But take a look at kitplanes. You can build a KR2 for under $15,000, or a Wag-Aero reproduction of a Piper PA-12/14/18 (depending on what you want.) There's stuff you can build in under 300 hours, there are very fast piston singles, maybe even jets. That's where the innovation future is.
Any plane has two coefficients: Vx and Vy. One is the maximum climb speed, and one is the max climb rate. That seems a bit weird, but it comes out of the math: Vx means you can get *to* an altitude quickly, at a lower angle of climb, and Vy means you can *climb* at a high angle. As the altitude increases these two get closer until they meet, at which point the aircraft can no longer climb.
With that said, all planes suffer from increasing stall speed with altitude. Now what I don't know is whether the operational ceiling, determined by the intersection of Vx and Vy, might sometimes be lower than 'coffin corner' or whether it's always higher, that you always run into Vne running into Vs1 -- but I'll do some reading about it and see if I can get a good answer.
And yeah, you're basically exactly right. Once you push yourself into the corner the only way out is to reduce power and nose-down at the same time; any other range of inputs (bank, climb, just nose-down, just reduce-power) runs into one or the other limitation.
Airline hospitality has been a nod to a more elegant time for the last two decades; I suspect this will provide the justification to dispose of it entirely, or at least start charging for it, if people can no longer bring a substitute.
I'm sure takeoff weight is the same as landing weight: for most light aircraft the assumption is the only weight lost during flight is fuel unless you're a jump plane or very unlucky.
I generally assume fuel weighs 5.9-6.2 pounds per gallon, depending on the temp. Jet A weighs 6.8 pounds per gallon, though. I don't know where you're flying from, but most of the places I hang out, the difference in price between Jet A and 100LL is not very much, and less if I have an engine that can burn automobile gasoline.
Yeah, the payload is pretty poor. I got interested in that plane because the designer put a ramp in the back of his and would fly from airport to airport with a Honda motorcycle in the back, which is pretty cool, but not very efficient from a passenger seat/mile/gallon standpoint. Also, yes, his numbers reflect that all 6 passengers want to go somewhere, rather than just 'paying' passengers (even though of course you can't use a homebuilt for commercial operations.)
My point being: this thing rivals a 747 for efficiency, and it costs about 1/1000 as much, and that wasn't even what it was designed for. Building a plane that is actually usable for commercial operations will probably cost 10x what this does (and puts it right in the range of the VLJs) but for short-hop flights, that still might be viable, *especially* if you start looking at time savings on the ground. Many people will forgive a slower cruise if they don't spend as much time waiting in line. (Witness people driving on surface streets to avoid a traffic jam: they'd rather feel like they're still progressing, just slowly.)
I think it's fairly likely that within ten years we won't be carrying passenger baggage on commercial aircraft: laws will be passed and most/all personal baggage will be shipped via cargo carriers. I may be wrong. But if that happened it would speed up the security lines, helping airlines process people faster (which is one reason I think it might happen.) It would also boost VLJ/lightplane operations.
Minor terminology correction from a pilot: Vne (velocity never-exceed) approaches Vs1 (velocity stall, clean configuration.) At the point where those cross, you're simultaneously ripping the wings off while stalling. (0r would be if the plane did actually come apart at Vne: one presumes there's a bit of safety margin, although you'll probably exceed that after the stall.)
I mostly agree with what you're saying, but.
>Government officials aren't reacting out of common sense, they are reacting out of irrational fear.
I don't think so. I think they're acting out of the entirely rational fear that if they don't do every single thing possible, ban every possible hazardous object, that there will be a public uproar, they'll get sued, that they'll be found responsible for the attack. This is the backside of government-as-protector: that if you don't do everything you can (to restrict other people's freedom, basically) that you'll be found negligent and liable.
In a way it's a tragedy-of-the-commons: you cannot afford to take the chance that you'll be singled out for catastrophic reprisal by an outraged (and not-very-deeply-thinking) public, so you have to restrict as much freedom as you can, to stay up with the other people who are doing the same thing. It's a race to the bottom.
Big jets are very efficient iff they're filled. When you're flying half-full jets you're wasting a lot of fuel. To the best of my knowledge, Martin Hollman's Super Stallion, a six-passenger fast piston airplane, is nearly twice as efficient as a 747 if both have all their seats full. Not just a little: almost twice as efficient.
I question the use of VLJ's for efficient mass transport, but a large fleet of comparatively inexpensive, well-designed piston aircraft could do a good job of replacing a lot of domestic air travel. Given that the FAA estimates it's faster to drive than fly via big commercial airlines for flights under 500 miles (variable distance, depending on how long security takes: it's probably more like 700 miles currently) being able to drive to a local/regional airport and go through security with the other four people on your flight, might be both more efficient *and* faster, and has lower security/danger implications for the country as a whole. An 1800 pound plane isn't even going to get through a brick wall if it were crashed purposely.
James Fallows wrote a (slightly date) book about this called "Free Flight". It's an interesting read.
We're USING the name. (For what, precisely, I can't tell you. It's, uh, a matter of National Security.) I suggest you go after Wyoming instead. Nobody lives in Wyoming, at least nobody worth talking about.
I haven't gotten to look at the page (don't browse outside slashdot from work, and home is offline right now) so I didn't realize the prices were that low. That's more than tempting. Thank you very much for the link and review. At that price, I can actually sell several boxes for $50 to local used computer stores and buy a couple.
Your sarcasm may be a little funny, but entirely misplaced. A metal bar with two pointy bits that poke keys, attached to a solenoid, would take, oh, fifteen minutes to make, and would simultaneously push keys on two keyboards at equal rates. "Robot" doesn't mean "positronic brain, bilaterally symmetric, humanoid, dances like J.Lo" -- it can mean 'a machine that does the work of a human.'
Or, say, "I take complete responsibility for the disaster in New Orleans."
Yeah, see, there's the tradeoff. On the one side, I have free (essentially) loud power-hungry old K2-350's, and on the other I have very expensive, quiet power-efficient new VIA and ARM machines. I'll sit down and do a cost/benefit, but I'm probably going to end up staying with my current old systems. I have an IPCop machine downstairs, acting as my firewall/NAT. It has a fanless 486. It cost nothing (I found it on a curb) and has been chugging along for 5 years doing a great job and sucking up quite a bit of power. It's hard to imagine that a new low-power system would be cheaper unless my electricity rates go through the roof.
Could you recommend a source/supplier for what you're looking at? It sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. I've looked at fanless ARM-based systems but they're not cheap and not easy to set up (I'm told.)