You are assuming that a fly-by-wire system is more failure prone then the standard mechanical linkages, it is possible that a fly-by-wire system could be simpler and less failure prone then the current systems. And even "basic" models of cars these days have so many electronic extras that fly-by-wire is likely to be a minor additional cost if any at all.

Fly-by-wire has been done in the past, people just prefer having a steering wheel because they are used to it. I think that as more cars transition to be being capable of autonomous driving then people will drop the huge bulky wheel in favour of a small joystick that can be used when needed.

>There is little excuse for it

Yeah there is, most traffic is to American sites and we have a limited international cable infrastructure which mostly relies on 2nd and 3rd parties in the link. On my last ISP I had connection problems on occasion because either SingTel or the US ISP at the landing in America would fuck with some settings. With the NBN I believe most of the international links and peering will be handled by NBNCo which should have more bargaining power then the small ISP's currently do (the big ISP's in Australia generally prefer fucking customers over).

For the simple reason that many people might find that sort of thing stinks of Big Brother. People are used to official photographs now but generally find other forms of identification such as fingerprinting to be too associated with law enforcement to be acceptable. The appeal of Iris scans would be to do them when children are born and can't protest, meanwhile the parents are probably too overjoyed and tired to protest either.

Also I suspect the authorities don't like biometrics which change because they like to push through cases on forensic identification and so don't like the public thinking about the false positive rate.

AFAIK rugby players, who play without helmets or padding, show similar injuries but not to the same degree as American Football players. And some countries where rugby is popular are already talking about multi-match or even season medical "bans" for concussed players (concussion is somewhat cumulative, every one you get makes it more likely you will be concussed in future).

But at least football players get better compensated than soldiers with IED caused traumatic brain injuries.

My favourite example of this kind of stuff is the reefs in the pacific made from dumped US and Japanese war surplus. Even though much of that equipment remained in US arsenals through the 1950's and was used by US allies well into the 70's it was cheapest to dump brand new tanks and use the space to ship soldiers home.

[quote]Seems to me like even with the advent of missile subs those tunnels could still have served as a hideout for World Leaders (tm) from our side of the political spectrum if the worst had happened...[/quote]

Not if you RTFA. The camp was abandoned because they had to trim and remove 120 tons of ice a month to maintain the tunnels because of the ice sheets movement. The tunnels themselves also weren't nearly deep enough to shield from "nearby" nuclear explosions or conventional bombings, which would be inevitable as its location was no secret.

Facilities like Raven Rock were far more secure and easier to maintain, not to mention reachable before the bombs fell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Rock,_Pennsylvania

>Most of those aircraft losses were in combat missions, not in training.

There is a difference between crashing an aircraft on a combat missions because it is a piece of shit death trap (like all early jets) and losing one to actual combat.

From what I have been told by the knowledgeable in previous discussions is that civilian twin engine aircraft are designed to function on one engine, so it is a sure bet that military ones are as well. The only case I can think where this mightn't apply is if the aircraft had a full combat load, but this was a training flight.

From the fact that people could hear a failing engine it is likely that both engines failed one after the other (eg catastrophic turbine failure leading to the other engine being damaged by fragments), or this was something like a fuel pump failure.

What do you think caused WWIII in Star Trek?

No it doesn't. The KGB used to count the cars in the Pentagon car park, the NSA/DIA used to listen for encrypted military radio traffic to gauge readiness levels. Everyone knew they did this, and there was only the most cursory attempts to conceal it.

Intelligence gathering is mostly far more prosaic than people assume. The real covert stuff, like using submarines to attach listening devices to Soviet undersea cables, is only a tiny part of what is going on. Mostly it is gathering a whole bunch of "newspaper clippings" and attempting to create an overall impression of what the enemy is up to (and this is why it was easy to "spice up" the Iraq and WMD intel to support an invasion).

And yes this is incredibly dangerous (as Iraq found out) and almost lead to Nuclear War in the 1980's when the Soviets relied on it to figure out if the US was going to pull a first strike.

In the original analogy rich people getting into heaven is virtually impossible (ie actually squeezing through a needle). The gate interpretation lowers the eligibility bar to just rich people giving away their wealth.

Of course this usually gets further re-defined to something like "just giving away their wealth when they die" or "just giving away a lot of wealth".

You do in Australia because the wages are crazy here ($100,000 to drive a truck) and apparently female operators are gentler on the equipment.

That may be, but doesn't that happen all the time? Attorneys representing a client for a portion of any damages/settlement is pretty damn common.

This whole incident reminds me of a playground bully running to tell the teachers that a victim dared to fight back.

That is what Santorum said. And I think most of the West these days considers anything consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home to not be the end of the world and not the governments bloody business.

Also the logical conclusion of Santorum's position is to either "fix" all the gays or to restrain them from being able to have gay sex. I am an Evangelical Christian and I think Santorum is a dangerous man whose basic ideology is antithetical to liberal democracy.