Heck, I'm going to go our on a limb and predict that we'll see at least seven or eight billion people die within the next century.

If you get overrun by a glacier, I'm not sure how much sympathy I'd have for you.

Oh, don't misunderstand... I'm betting that what was patented is actually not all that complex in principle. And naturally, being patents, they're written as broadly and confusingly as possible. That doesn't mean the software as a whole is not extremely sophisticated. Try reading an open source video or audio codec and you'll see how complex it really is in practice.

A locked and reinforced cockpit door prevented hijackers from gaining entry to a Chinese flight a few years back. Members of the crew and some off-duty policemen among the passengers fought back and subdued the entire group of hijackers - even killing two of them in the struggle. There have apparently been other hijackings in which the criminals never gained entry to the cockpit either, instead holding either passengers or the plane itself hostage with weapons or bombs respectively.

Locked doors may also have deterred other hijackings in recent years, along with the realization that passengers seem far more likely to react by attacking and subduing the hijackers on their own, though of course you really can't know for sure one way or another. It seems as though 9/11 permanently altered the "rules" of airline hijackings when it was realized that airliners could be turned into extremely deadly guided missiles powerful enough to take down the largest structures. At that point, instead of dealing with hundreds of dead, you could be looking at many thousands of dead.

It's true a pilot could conceivably do the same thing in the future, and I'm not sure there's ever really a way to prevent that from happening. The copilot could just have easily have switched to manual control and pushed the nose of the plane straight into the ground just prior to landing, and there would be no way for the pilot to react in time since this would only take a few seconds. As such, I think the locked and reinforced door still seems like the safest option. As horrible as this event was, it remains an even rarer occurrence than hijackings, even though we've seemed to have a recent uptick.

Everything they say is already recorded. Recording audio is arguably much more privacy-invasive than video, so I fail to see how video would be some dramatic chilling effect like you suggest. Yes, all the plane settings are recorded by the black box, but video could give another insight as to *why* the pilots reacted the way they did. If it increases flight safety in the wake of an accident, I think that deserves consideration. I don't want to necessarily alienate the pilots, but I'd like to hear the professionals on both sides talk about the pros and cons of this. In the wake of questionable pilot actions in recent years, I think it's not unreasonable to re-consider this.

I'd also support a law stating ensuring that the audio and video can't be accessed by the airline unless there is an incident involving serious damage or the loss of the plane in order to protect the privacy of the pilots and crew.

Never let bothersome facts or evidence get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. After all, if you dig down a few layers of turtles, you can convince yourself that any of these "facts" are simply manufactured, and therefore are evidence of the conspiracy themselves.

Occam's Razor be damned. It's much more entertaining to think up wildly implausible theories to explain how the pilot could somehow be locked out of the cockpit and the plane be instructed to descent carefully and controlled straight into a mountain range. Although, come to think of it, I still haven't heard anyone come up with even a remotely plausible explanation as to how this could possibly happen other than the official version of the story.

Are you crazy enough to trust your life to a wetware computer we can't even understand with any real confidence? There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in your body, and if just the wrong one clots up, it's over for you. Many important components have no redundancy. Fatal malfunctions regularly occur with no way to repair them. Worst of all, you don't even have an offsite backup system for your most critical data.

That's basically what your body is. If you're dumb enough to rely on an organic life-support system designed through random trial and error, you deserve to die in a messy pile of organic failure.

California is a nutjob of a state, but I have to say, I don't really see a problem with them outlawing flamethrowers. I mean, vast portions of the state are hot, dry, and pretty much a tinderbox waiting to be ignited. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, they probably weren't considering this aspect when they outlawed them. They were thinking "ZOMG! Flamethrowers?!? We're going to see DRIVE-BY-FLAMINGS if we don't outlaw these things!" I'd guess it was just a happy coincidence that they banned something that's probably better off banned for more pragmatic reasons.

To answer your question: Yes. Whatever you think of patents (personally I despise software patents and think they're a cancer on our industry), these are not single algorithms, nor are they in any way simple. This is very sophisticated software. At least scan through the Wikipedia entry linked in the summary to get a rough idea of the complexity of these monsters.

Modern video formats are comprised of a vast collection of different algorithms and techniques, and part of the encoding process is determining how best to apply those various techniques to create the best compression while maintaining a specific desired perceptual quality. It's perhaps best to think of a video codec as a family of many different video encoding, decoding, and storage techniques.

Autopilot systems can and do fail on occasion. Or more precisely, the sensors that they rely on can be rendered inoperative, causing a failure or shutdown of the system. In most cases, you absolutely want the pilot to be able to manually override the computer in case something is obviously going wrong.

There's really no easy answer to the problem of potentially suicidal/homicidal pilots. Would you feel more or less safe without a human pilot on board? Even after this incident, I still want a pair of pilots up front able to use their own best judgment in a sticky situation, because the vast majority of the time, those two people are every bit as anxious to get back down to earth safely as I am.

I'm actually a professional videogame programmer, so I'm aware of the various disciplines involved. My point was this: if you're taking a C++ class, you're typically choosing the programming route (a CS degree), not one of the many other disciplines (designers, modellers, animators, texture artists, concept artists, writers, audio engineers, production, etc).

The implication of that post seemed to be that "I wanna make games" = "not serious", and therefore less likely to learn a "serious" language like C++. I just thought it was an odd thing to say when C++ happens to be the language of choice in the videogame industry.

That's sort of like proclaiming you want to be a mathematician and being put off by Calculus.

Of course there's an incentive. Just like with anything else, Heinz dominance in the ketchup market is not guaranteed. Consumers ALWAYS have the option of switching to another brand like Hunt's, or a generic store brand that's cheaper. Heinz wants give consumers a reason for choosing a slightly more expensive national brand, and a better bottle may be a part of that decision.

Moreover, what can you really do to market ketchup? It's not exactly a product that you can improve on in terms of the food itself. They've already been improving bottles in many ways (more convenient plastic squeeze bottles that you can store upside down, improved caps, tamper-resistant seals that are easier to open, etc), so it's very likely that they'll adopt this if the cost isn't exorbitant. In fact, they'll probably actually feature that bottle in a marketing campaign if it's a significant improvement from the current standard.

Keep in mind that the Strategic Bombing Survey's postwar analysis is not "official history". It's easy enough to find many dissenting opinions, so I don't think it's fair to call it "revisionist history" either way.

From the Wikipedia article covering the controversy of the atomic bomb attacks:

And if you want to go straight to the source:

It also goes on to discuss the opposing viewpoints, such as the Strategic Bombing Survey that you mentioned, as well as others.

So, in fairness I should refrain from saying that "the Japanese were unlikely to surrender before the bombing", and instead state "many of Japan's military leaders wished to continue the war". As to what would have really transpired with a different course of action, it's obviously a matter of speculation. My feeling, and that of many historians, is that it may have been extremely difficult for Emperor Hirohito to break the cabinet deadlock like he did had it not been for the two atomic attacks and the entry of Russia into the war against Japan.

I'd guess the general answer is: "Anything that pisses off a person in a position of authority."

The articles don't really get into specifics, but here's one example:

Translated into the US equivalent (as near as I can tell), if you said "I don't think the city of Trenton, New Jersey should be shut down for a day just because Governor Chris Christie died from a heart attack." (probably worded less politely, knowing teenagers), and then your friend "liked" that statement on Facebook, you BOTH could be arrested.