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Comment Margin of error (Score 4, Interesting) 449

It seems very scary that on an aircraft with everything working but the airspeed indicators (and I understand that those are very important), after more than 3 1/2 minutes the aircrew was unable to prevent the plane from hitting the ocean. This was a state of the art aircraft. Makes you wonder how many close calls there have been that luckily didn't result in catastrophe.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 591

The project is certainly threatened by Chrome, and has no chance to beat it given that it's Google's own browser, so these efforts to ride along on Chrome's publicity ultimately are doomed to fail. As long as Google commits resources to develop Chrome anyway. The issue is that if you have the skills to produce a browser that is on a par with Chrome, why would you not take a big salary to work ON Chrome.

I personally think Firefox should focus on the privacy/security aspects of the experience and make it clear they are the anti-Chrome aka extension of Google's tentacles onto all aspects of your online existence. I honestly have no idea what the strategy is at Mozilla right now, and I suspect neither do they. Trying to be some kind of cuddlier but much slower version of Chrome is very 'wut?' to me.

Comment Re:Nuke power (Score 2) 483

Exactly. I'm not "scared" of nuclear power, I'm an engineer and I understand the concepts of risk and failure mode effects analysis. The problem is primarily management failures in most of these high-profile accidents, as summarized by the poster above. There is no way to eliminate those on long enough time scales because human beings make mistakes. The problem with nuclear power is that the catastrophe scenario is very, very bad, and the timescale to react is very short. The latest update from Fukushima is that according to simulations based on the data they have, the Unit 1 reactor began melting down within 16 hours after loss of core cooling.

My feeling from reading some of the responses from people who are in favor of nuclear power is that for some people it reduces to an attachment to the technology. It's pretty cool to have the ability to split the atom to generate power (even though it's ultimately just boiling water). There's a visceral pride we feel in being able to harness something inherently very dangerous. Until it gets away from us.

Comment Where is all the water going?? (Score 2) 664

So it seems clear at this point that all three of the damaged reactors are leaking water, meaning, logically, that the containments are breached in all of them. Building 4's spent fuel pool also is suspected to be leaking. Where are the tons of water they are pumping in every day going? The turbine building basements so not have infinite capacity, and that much water won't evaporate at any speed from inside underground spaces...

Comment Re:Flight Recorders are Sooo 20th Century (Score 2) 218

What happens if (I know this never happens in real life, LOL) but hypothetically, what happens if something interrupts the communication from the plane, say for example when it is upside-down in a raging thunderstorm plunging towards the ocean surface?

You would still need a backup flight recorder. The advantage of the inflight system is that you might obviate having to find wreckage in a case like the Air France flight, but in exchange you would have to be constantly storing telemetry data from thousands of commercial flights a day; this would cost more on a yearly basis than spending $20M to send bots to the ocean floor for the once in a generation crash like this.

Comment Re:If you put (Score 1) 333

This issue at hand is that Dropbox claimed your data was secure. Those with a technical background or a cynical bent would assume that was b.s. but an average person would perhaps take them at their word. So it's valid to call them on the misinformation. The accurate information would be that your data is secure in transit, but accessible to anybody that has direct access to the files, which would of course include Dropbox itself. I actually would hope the keys are not colocated with the data; if that is the case, then at least ONLY Dropbox employees can access your data, otherwise, anybody that can crack the S3 cloud could do it.

Comment Re:My take (Score 1) 611

The main problem with the short-term mentality is the structure of corporate management and financing, as John Bogle has pointed out. The 'owners' of most large corporations are passive investors. The company is controlled by top management for its own personal renumeration; essentially the enterprise works for the top dozen or so executive managers. In the current compensation system, most of their gains come about via either gross profit based bonus plans or stock price increases. Almost all of these are typically short-term, i.e. 10 years or less systems, so it is economically rational for these managers to pursue whatever strategy will best produce the highest 10 year return to themselves. Given that the compensation generally will produce permanent great wealth for these managers in that time period, the fate of the enterprise past that timeframe is irrelevant.

I don't claim to know how you fix this, it's intrinsic to the current Western corporate structure.

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