Because often, what you can't see is as important as what you can. Imagination is important. Composition is important, and emotion is important.

Right, the thing is though theres more going on to depth of field than just "This part of the image in focus, and that part out of focus". I mean its definately a useful effect because it pretty much defines what part of the photo your supposed to be looking at, but good shallow DOF really is quite an amazing effect down well and terrible when done bad.

On my 50mm lens (I recomend a 50mm to ANYONE whos playing with SLRs. Its a cheap lens, handles great in low light and very easy to take attractive photos with) the depth of field also interacts with light so you see these great specks of light all through the background and other esoteric effects that really enhance the effect. If I just put the background out of focus with a blur, it'd be just.... well blury.
Finally its not a linear blur either. Some parts are more in focus than others and this adds to the effect because its how your eye does it too.

The test photo in the article just makes it look like someones put a lasso tool on the model, inverted it, then just done some sort of blur on the background. Its just not the same as the DOF on a real wide apearature camera.

I think you're wrong. Both sides go in for regulation, regardless of their rhetoric. (Cicero originally formalized rhetoric as a way of lying in a convincing manner, and taught it in a school for Roman politicians.)

They do tend to regulate different things, but neither side ever seems to undo the other sides regulations, no matter how adversely they may affect the citizenry. After all, they need something to vilify their opponents about.

FWIW, Guiness is the only beer I currently consider worthwhile. But the Guiness I see says on the label that it is brewed in the US, and so would be affected by this ruling.

As someone else said, it is best at room temperature. Cold it's merely acceptable. Most stout I find unpalatable.

But think how much fun doing the comparisons could be!

I think you overstate the inefficiency of ethanol as a fuel...though perhaps you need to tune your engine differently to take advantage of it.

OTOH, it is a remarkably poor fuel when one considers the costs of originally producing it. Sugar cane is much more plausible, but doesn't grow in the same areas. The best argument for corn derived ethanol fuel that I can see is that any corn used as fuel won't be turned into fructose syrup. AFAIKT, this is basically a government subsidy to the large growers. A very inefficient one, too.

Pig shit, not so much.

I hate to reply twice, but I was giving this some thought. How many of these crashes are the result of faulty automation?

Virtually all airliners have redundant everything, especially for critical components like engines. Drones usually don't have these things - if the predator's single engine fails, then it crashes. Sure, they could put two engines on them, but the cost of doing that is higher than the cost of buying a new one from time to time. They're designed to be expendable.

A computer-piloted passenger aircraft would obviously be designed with all the same reliability standards as any other passenger aircraft.

All my other comments still apply - I do agree that the automation would still need some improvement beyond what we have today. However, I just wanted to point out that you can't project from military drone failure rates to the failure rate of a 777 controlled by automation.

The whole concept is to get the pilot out of the cockpit entirely - they wouldn't be managing the autopilot - it would be managing itself.

Plus, if updates to the plane's mission were made while in-flight, it would be done by a team working from desks. They would have time to properly follow procedures, and wouldn't have long stretches of idle time (it would be like a call center - they just move from one plane to the next).

This would require changes to how we manage planes, ATC, etc in general. However, I think they're changes that are going to be inevitable at some point.

Or just use remote telemetry to do these operations. Ships already use harbor pilots who relieve the regular crew when in highly congested areas.

Good points. If humans were to be taken out of the loop obviously it will be necessary to change how the automation works, sometimes substantially. Anything that causes an autopilot disconnect, for example, obviously has to be redesigned (well, aside from pilot-triggered disconnects). There may also need to be an increase in redundancies as well so that the plane can remain fully automation even with failures. The algorithms also have to be designed to better handle a lack of sensor input, since all the pitot tubes icing up is always a possibility and so on.

No reason you couldn't have satellite telemetry on aircraft and a room full of test pilots somewhere standing by to assist if there is an emergency. Granted, you can't always guarantee communications, but if there is a failure it would be better to have the seasoned disaster recovery guy at the controls instead of whoever the seniority rules put on the route. Plus, the emergency team isn't limited to two crew members - they can have one guy who does nothing but fly the plane, another guy who does nothing but navigate, three engineers who do nothing but try to fix the broken systems, an overall command guy who does nothing but coordinate, one guy who handles communications, one guy who talks to the cabin crew, and so on - and they're all fresh having not spent 30 hours this week stuck on a plane.

But, I suspect that in many emergencies such a crew would often just manage the automation and provide supervision.

Even in a case where pitot tubes fail and such the automation CAN be improved, eliminating a potential source of accidents in the future. When a human learns, only that pilot improves unless you spend a LOT of time retraining the fleet (and the Air France pilots should have been trained in that maneuver anyway). When a computer program is adjusted, every plane in service improves, 100% of the time.

IIUC, his lawyers requested that certain materials not be produced, and in doing so quoted a section of the state law which exhempted a particular category of material from being required to be produced. If you don't like the phrasing, talk to the people who wrote the law. His lawyers were just doing their job, and making it easy for the judge.

I don't think they count as science...until the make predictions that match the later observed results. Then they do.

Unfortunately, as you pointed out actually recreating the simulation can be absurdly difficult. And if it's not reproducable, then it's not science.

That said, when I worked at a transportation study commission, we used models all the time. We never deceived ourselves that they were correct, but they were a lot better than just guessing. Policies were built based around their 20-year projections. Often we'd have several very different 20-year projections based on different assumptions about what would be done in between. (Would this transit project be successful? Would that bridge be built? What effect would building the other highway have on journey-to-work times?) The results were never accurate. They were subject to political manipulation...but so was what projects would be built. It was a lot better than just guessing, but it sure was a lot short of science.

I think of this frequently when I read about the models, and the problems that people have with accepting their projections. Usually the problems aren't based in plausibility, but rather in what beliefs make them comfortable. And in those cases I tend to believe the models. But I sure don't think of them as "sound science".

OTOH: Do you trust the "Four Color Theorum"? It's a mathematical proof that any map can be colored with four colors, with no two adjacent patches having the same color except at a single point. The proof is so complex that no human can follow it. Do you trust it? Would you trust it if a lot of money was riding on the result?

Even math is less than certain. Complex proofs are only as trustworthy as every step in them multiplied, and both people and computers make mistakes. There are lots of illusions that prove that people will frequently dependably make the same mistake. So you can't really trust math. But just try to find something more trustworthy. You need to learn to live with less than certainty, because certainty is always an illusion.

Who's going to tell the judge no? Who's going to enforce it?

Sometimes a judge will be so egregiously corrupt that the higher courts will discipline them, but it's quite infrequent, and I've never heard of it happening when he was acting to support the local politicos. (And even then the "discipline" is generally trivial in comparison to the offense.)

Are you certain about the "state secrets act"? It seems to me that National Security Letters cover the same ground...and then some.