Well, I suppose it's possible that the systems were small enough back then that they were able to prove that the systems were correct to essentially eliminate bugs, but as you point out, once past the physical security, I suspect there's a number of new techniques that could be brought to compromise the systems - even without exploiting what might be called traditional flaws.

Yep, in school (long ago) there was an old adage -- "never underestimate the bandwidth of a semi full of mag tapes". Sure the latency is high, but in many cases, not an issue!

Thanks for this explanation. So, I guess what you are saying is that to make things more economical, effort should be made into making the equipment less complicated and more rugged to reduce the maintenance aspects. I suppose this doesn't bode well for the personal jet packs we've all be promised for so many years! ;-)

Seems about time they start doing this ... others have been doing similar activities with cars and planes. Helicopters have always seemed like a good idea to me, but generally are outside the financial reach of most of us (I've only been on one 20 minute sightseeing tour in Hawaii and it was $200 or $10/minute/passenger - there were 5 passengers). I wonder how much of my fare was to cover insurance premiums? Perhaps with more data for the actuaries to work with, the flight costs could drop to the point we could see helo transportation rival busses / small planes.

Sounds like you're experiencing some burnout. I say take a break - the dip in the management pool wasn't far enough away. Do something else entirely for a 12-18 months. I did this, and after a couple years I found I had all the motivation I needed to get my development skills honed up. As others have pointed out, many of the skills you learned years ago can be very valuable, provided you figure out how to apply them to the new world order. Getting out of the game for a while will give you the perspective you need. I'm not saying this is easy or even financially smart ... you'll probably take a significant cut in pay to do the "new thing" and when you come back to development you will be competing with younger folks ... but you'll have the same hunger and passion that they have (maybe even more), so you *will* be able to compete. Best of luck!

Since the sailor is familiar with Slashdot, I think he's probably all set for the electronic tech ... I'd concentrate on supplying power to all the gadgets he's likely to bring along - solar, wind gen, towable water gen, battery banks for storage ... And he should also consider some of the new tech for sails and rigging -- many of the synthetics can be worked with by the owner (no need for swaging, etc.).

Ha! That brings back great memories of a 1986 Comp. Sci. class comparing 1200 baud modems and a pick-up truck filled with mag tapes for transferring data between Saskatoon and Calgary in Canada. Well done!

Doh! Well thanks for the effort!

Ah if only I had some mod points left to mod this up!

Don't most cars today have rev limiters? Certainly the Lexus from the article had one. Not the best for the engine perhaps, but not catastrophic either (I quite regularly hit the limiter in my Acura, though to be fair, it's only engaged momentarily). Even if the result were to throw a rod, it would still be better than winding things up to very high speeds and then losing control and crashing ...

I think the big thing is how many people would be calm enough to engage the tools (such as turn off the key, put the car in neutral, engage the brake override) even if they were available.

I once nearly drove my truck through a restaurant wall ... I'd realized I'd dropped something while getting into the truck after I'd gotten in and put the truck into reverse. I can't explain why, but I thought to myself, "I don't need to put it in park, I'll just put it in neutral, hop out and pick it up". So with that in mind I pulled the shifter from reverse down through neutral and into drive as I was hopping out. As you might imagine, the truck started forward up and onto the sidewalk. So, instead of calmly reaching into the truck and a) pushing the shifter into Neutral, b) turning off the key, c) pulling on the parking brake, I chose to d) try to jump into the moving truck and step on the brake. The truck is a little higher than most cars, so you have to step up into it ... so as I was hopping on one foot forward while trying to put my foot on the brake, the truck was climbing the curb. The result was that my foot gave the brake only a glancing blow, after which it slipped onto the accelerator ... Well, now the truck lurched forward and across the sidewalk into the bushes on its path towards the restaurant wall ... I stopped it with about 6' to spare. You should have seen the expression on the people sitting in the booth next to the window as this truck was lurching toward them. (Note that they were like deer in the headlights too ... unlike TV or movies, no one was diving out of the booth to get away, they were just there looking at a 2 1/2 ton truck coming right at them)

Sometimes people's brains (at least sometimes my brain) doesn't always arrive at the best choice of action :-(

Nope, said he wasn't doing anything wrong at all, but ... that people we calling in about a crazy gunman, which they have to respond to which makes more work for them plus in general raises their heart rates (after all they don't know that he's not a lunatic at the time) which could result in something unfortunate happening. (Like if they yelled at him and he ended up turning the spotting scope towards them to get a look at them more closely ... could be considered an act of aggression)

My aunt and uncle are avid bird watchers in Canada. My uncle built up a spotting scope on a rifle stock that he uses up there all the time. He brought it down here to SoCal and was out at the edge of a lagoon looking at shore birds when all of a sudden a number of police cars showed up, lights flashing, and the officers jumped out and drew their service pistols. Seems a number of folks had reported a lunatic (I'm not dismissing that assessment) with a gun out in the lagoon. Luckily they didn't shoot my uncle, but instead had a bit of a chuckle about the whole thing with the ultimate suggestion that his selection of bird watching paraphernalia could be better ;-) Relatives!

Doesn't that seem a little light? Especially if the intent with the keyboard is to usurp the laptop?