Generally, an incident like this will be traced to the submarine commander skipping the surfacing protocols spelled out in the exercise tasking. The submarine CO has everyone tracked, knows where everyone is and can torpedo at will. The reality is there are surfacing protocols, signals and course/speed specified to avoid collisions built into any ASW exercise. USS Leftwich collided with submarine in 1982 during exercises. The Leftwich CO and bridge watch were cleared and commended for rapid damage control reaction and rendering assistance. The submarine CO was selected to pursue other career options.

Point to consider is the Imperial Japanese Navy design philosophy. Carriers, like their planes, were glass jawed fighters. The carriers were fast, could cycle planes quickly. This came by eliminating armored flight decks, compartmentalization and blast shielding on weapon elevators. Midway caught the Japanese with hanger bays full of armed and fueled aircraft. Dropping a single bomb or two into that was like dropping a match into a grill soaked with extra lighter fluid.

The American carriers of the time carried more armor, added luxuries like CO2 flooding on aviation fuel systems and had crews trained in isolating damage and restoring services. Yorktown reported sunk at Coral Sea twice, made her way back to Pearl for a 3 day miracle refit. Combat ready she absorbed two airstrikes and submarine torpedoing before finally sinking.

The carriers of today's navy build on the that tradition. USS Enterprise had two iron bombs go off on her flight deck on station off the Vietnamese coast. The crew repaired damages in few hours and she continued flight operations.

It would be nice if the Chinese were willing to do that. Maybe as a tourist attraction?

Norman Spinrad - varied novels and intriguing people
Lloyd Biggle Jr Monument is one of my favorite novels.
Eric Frank Russell - Look for And then there were none
James Hogan - Sometimes accused of telling the same libertarian story over and over. There might be some truth to that, but he does it so well.
Donald Kingsbury - The Moon Goddess and the Son and Psychohistorical Crisis were intriguing. Amazingly detailed new worlds.
Tim Powers - Perhaps drifting into fantasy but well crafted stories.

The Crosstime Engineers are strip mining this universe. It's close, from an energy consumption point of view and has no advanced civilization to get in the way. The testing phase is over and full scale exploitation will begin shortly.

he security ramifications of putting every last IV pump on the hospital network are simply too great to deal with, at least at present.

Well actually every last IV pump in our two hospitals, half dozen care centers and dozen medical offices are on a network. Medical devices connect to a wireless SSID with restricted network access. IV pumps shipping now a days record dose information, maintain libraries of drug/time protocols, and can issue a service me request.

As systems get more interconnected, time becomes important. In the last 5 years, NTP has become more and more important to keeping multiple systems running at the same time. I've had to teach vendors how to configure their systems. The Microsoft fan club is particularly bad since they expect system to just synch up with the standard MSFT time servers. Of course those ports are blocked, and those time servers are always off anyway.

Have the shiniest Airline Magazine articles.

Greg Costikyan - First Contract, a first contact novel showing profit behind exploiting backward worlds.
Robert Frezza - A Small Colonial War and the sequel, Fire in a Faraway Place future war
Harry Harrison - Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, this would make fantastic action movie

Poul Anderson - High Crusade, Ens Flandry, Nick van R....
Lloyd Biggle, Jr - Monument was his peak, but anything he wrote is worthy of picking up
James Blish - Cities In Flight, short stories
James Hogan - enjoy
Donald Kingsbury - The Moon Goddess and the Son and Psychohistorical Crisis
John Myers Myers - Silverlock, a classic
Chris Moore - Hunter S. Thompson craziness in contemporary world. Find, read, laugh
Jerry Pournelle - tells a good yarn, A Spaceship for the King / King David's Spaceship
Tom Reamy - San Diego Lightfoot Sue, Blind Voices
Eric Frank Russell - everything ,but And Then There Were None is a personal favorite
Fred Saberhagen - An Old Friend of the Family (and sequels) and Berserker stories
George R Stewart - Earth Abides, this novel defines the post apocalypse genre
Roger Zelazny - The first 3 Amber books, Jack of Shadows, Lord of Light

Old Friend of the family by Fred Saberhagen and it's Dracula told from the vampire's point of view. Seems the human records have it all wrong . . . Very much recommended.

If you have time to wait, see Republic Wireless. My Verizon contract has gone month to month and I'm just waiting for these guys to open enrollment again. For $19.99/month you get unlimited data and service, although RW does want you to use VOIP when possible.

>>> As a further note, right now there's no way to trace that serial number to me

Do you ever load a driver for that printer from media in the box or from the printer company web site? How about the Printer Control Applet that tells you when to buy cartridges adds duplex and custom paper options? Unless you're printing from from a system without a network connection, it's trivial to associate printer serial number with IP address.

Mod parent up. Once a medical device or application has passed FDA review and has a golden ticket, the vendor will plant their feet and avoid any changes. The bottom line drives this, it costs them to get FDA review and if they have an approved product, there's no reason to rock the boat.

The FDA does no review of the software at all, but their review of the hardware means that the manufacturer is completely immune to lawsuits if someone dies as a result of a bug in their software.

Once again, untrue. As a Software Quality Engineer for a major medical device manufacturer, I can tell you the FDA does review software and has regulations and guidance surrounding software development. In recent years the scrutiny of software based device has increased so much, that companies are having a difficult understanding exactly what the FDA excepts.

The FDA provides minimal guidance on software. I'm working with a Medical Application Vendor now who insists that we install MS SQL Server 2005 SP3 (which is out of support) for their new released product. This is what the FDA approved. The FDA also has guidelines for commercial off the shelf software that require vendor comply with security updates. That isn't really a priority once something is approved, you see. Strictly speaking, the FDA considers devices using commercial off the shelf software to be end of life when any software vendor ends support. Medical Application Vendor's take is they have FDA approval, don't worry. We'll wind up installing this, but with enough conference calls and meetings to point auditors and lawyers at the vendor.

'We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported, . . ."

Why should IPv6 be different than any other feature a vendor documents?