No one is to blame for the eruption of a volcano but the stopping of air traffic can be blamed on government fearmongering. The airspace closings were entirely based on computer models, which according to every test flight taken by major air carriers in the past few days, has been proven to be completely wrong.
British Airways, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air France-KLM Group all said today that airspace restrictions should be lifted, citing test flights into the ash cloud that showed no sign of impairment to aircraft performance. About 81,000 services have been canceled since the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted on April 14, spewing dust that could cause jet engines to fail by melting and then congealing in the turbines.
“These decisions were based on theoretical models,” International Air Transport Association Chief Executive Officer Giovanni Bisignani said today in Paris. “But the losses and chaos are not theoretical. When in a few weeks this situation is solved it will be a very embarrassing story for Europe.”
Hopefully, our government officials in North America won't make the same mistake.
If I were in that position--and I would hope should you be in such a position, too--I would err on the side of caution. I think it's unfounded to call their actions "fearmongering." The models they have are only as good as the data; in the light of this most recent event, the powers that be are bound to have some new data to improve future models.
Or do you honestly believe that the governments of the world, when presented with modeled, scientific information, should disregard it? There'd be an equally large or larger outcry, and I daresay it would be justified.
That is exactly what I thought. But then when I have to write windows code I didn't use windows calls for the most part. First I used WFC and then QT as an abstraction layer.
Somehow I envision a bunch of smiling tweenage Japanese schoolgirls in an Internet cafe each wearing one of these emblazoned with a Hello Kitty logo staring at the avatar of their boyfriend who is sitting at a nearby computer in the very same cafe.
But we don't live in a reasonable world. We live in a world ruled by marketing. Manufacturers will keep finding new gimmicks to sell consoles for many years, rest assured. There's more and more expensive motion tracking (camera-based now, which takes a lot of CPU to run). Then there's 3D. Then there's things like facial recognition, gesture tracking, etc. Then brainwave controls. And Live and PSN have proven to my satisfaction that consoles can do gaming on demand via internet as well.
What if it's a cloudy daytime. That would be like multi-terawatt lasers... To penetrate daytime clouds and still produce a bright light over an area of several thousand Km.
This is just ROFL.
Do you know what iPods have now? Wireless and more space than a Nomad! Not only was he correct about the iPod, but his comment directed Apple on the course that ultimately led to the iPhone. You fanboys owe Rob Malda for everything.
Cobol programmers are down in the dumps.
