Oh, I see your problem: you think I'm claiming that users of your hallowed creation[s] are doing the designing. Perhaps you need reading comprehension classes then.

I'm saying users of your HC's are doing the exploiting, the breaking, the every-day-using. They're the ones who are going to hold it upside down. Under water. Backwards. And then turn it on.

When it breaks, it's not the designer's fault, it's the user's "unorthodox" employment that is at fault.

Unless, that is, you've over-designed it, like the grip safeties in the original article, the inventors of which claim that they have reliability down to 99/100 correct fires. Please go consult your local firearms expert and ask them whether 1/100 rounds is a generally acceptable rate for misfires.

Again: what have you designed? I'd like to never spend money on it again.

You're everything that is wrong with designers of any stripe. Holy arrogance, Batman!

Seriously, were you intentionally being obtuse? I'm claiming that, in aggregate, yes users will end up knowing your system better than you do, at least if it's used often enough. They will find bugs, they will find exploits, you are not omniscient nor perfect. Your system will have flaws and new and interesting idiots will cause it to fail in new and spectacular ways. The best you can do is minimize the potential for catastrophic failures.

In any event, do you have a link to your design portfolio? I'd like to know precisely which designs, engineering projects, computer OSes, software products or consumer goods to avoid.

Thanks.

It's not a "gun", then, though -- it's "spare parts".

...Which means you'll have an over-designed system, prone to breaking in really weird and unpredictable ways. No, the answer is to have a strictly causal system in which known, simple actions result in known, "simple" results. It's impossible to design an idiot-proof system, as we know the world excels in producing Grade A idiots.

Also a Congressman who worried that stationing more US forces on Guam would flip the island over.

Absolutely. The US Congress contains the best and the brightest graduates of law school that we currently...

WE ARE SO HOSED.

She "also discussed whether her colleagues in Congress know enough about technology to make informed decisions on tech policy".

This is one of those trick questions, right? I mean, "No, next question." is too easy, right?

The article claims it's the world's greenest building, but from the pictures it looks kinda blue, steely and clear for the most part.

Did you read the article? The amendment was defeated because it decreased transparency and oversight at the FCC under the guise of "privacy". The GOP is open to considering this sort of legislation in a separate bill.

Once again: rockets aren't standard kinetics. Think: bullets, railguns, etc. That which delivers its destructive power based upon mass, rather than energy, explosives, etc.

But that's my point: standard kinetics wouldn't be feasible without some sort of physics-negating "inertial dampeners" ala Star Trek.

There are two great perils to ship-based weapons that I could foresee, regardless of ship size: heat dissipation and conservation of momentum. Any energy-based weapons would need to dump a tremendous amount of thermal energy off rather short-order, so your ships might have to drag some sort of radiator array behind them, leaving a sweet juicy target.

If you committed to projectile weapons, you would need to have some sort of recoil dampening mechanism/thrust compensator every time you fired the weapon.

So, ideally, you would have semi-autonomous self-propelled munitions that could be dumped, ala chaff or depth charges, and then directed towards their targets at the appropriate time.

The last time /. discussed this, it was pointed out that the spectrum L^2 was aiming for was intended for low-power satellite signals and was never intended to be used for (relatively) powerful ground stations. They were essentially trying to buy spectrum on-the-cheap and then repurpose it in a way that was virtually guaranteed to interfere with adjacent spectrum. So, while GPS devices could certainly be better-designed, this was more an incident of L^2 trying to abuse the system.

Physics, alas, makes for a harsh mistress.

The claim was that he "wasn't detained, just prevented from accessing a 'secure area'". And I'm saying that's a load of crap -- he was prevented from going to the gate area from whence he could board his plane. The definition of "secure area" matters greatly. He wasn't trying to pull rank and view some behind-the-scenes operations of the TSA (as the TSA's phrasing is obviously trying to imply) but rather "gain access" to the "secure area" otherwise known as the airport terminal.

Semantics matter, particularly when the petty bureaucrats use them to try to oppress us all via judicious use of same. That's what I was saying crap, and it's to my discredit that I didn't make that clear.