Most people on this thread understand that a cheap Boeing 737 costs about 60 million USD. For $100,000, knowing that an jetliner could not be lost, that is a sum the public may demand that the airlines pay. That is to say, for about 1/10 of 1% of the cost of a very cheap jetliner, this sort of massive charlie foxtrot would likely not take place again.

Further, there is a long tradition of government interference being required in the transportation industry to force changes that benefit overall public safety. Railroad history is rife with them, including entire political parties (The Grange) put together in an effort to boost regulation of a necessary industry. If the government is going to give away airports and airspace, allow jetliners to dump pollutants into the air, and provide gaterape security, then it is not unreasonable to ask airline companies to pony up 1/10th of 1% of the cost of an airplane to improve security.

With the exception of some "write-once, read-only" backup schemes, this will fail at the $300/disk level.

Meanwhile, go google "1TB USB Flash" and see the $1200 USB flash drives. These will cost a lot less ($100 each in two years I bet) in a few years, just in time for the first of these already-failed optical disks. Plus you don't need anything special to use a USB flash drive...

I call BS. All they are doing is generating noise from a laser. Anyone can do this with a laser and a detector diode. Splitting the beam and subtracting is nothing novel. I did this back in junor high in science class. (Back then a laser was a much bigger deal, but still.)

His discussion of the ADC is nice, but again, that's standard stuff. Same goes for his TLS talking points.

These guys are pumping out buzz words faster than their FPGA.

Didn't Heinlein write a short story about something similar? "Life-Line" I think it was called.

I think you have to go with both. As others have pointed out, humans can be awfully wrong too.

Having said this, there is no way, at all, that, if we had understood the gravity of the situation we would have done nothing. That's not the American or NASA spirit. Take John Glenn's first flight, where there was an indication that the heat shield and landing bag had been released in-orbit. Can you imagine being in that small capsule knowing that you might be about to burn up on re-entry? The incredible engineers, technicians, and flight directors considered every option and decided not to ignore the instrumentation reading (which was later proven to be false). They came up with a plan, and although it was untested and of course not analyzed by a computer, they put it into action, and sure enough, John Glenn made it back safely.

You're absolutely right that this level of complexity (and creativity) cannot be programmed into a computer model. It comes from ingenuity. Creativity. Outside-the-box thinking. We'll never know if the crew of Columbia could have repaired the damage, mitigated the risk, or been rescued because NOBODY TRIED. And they did deserve that fighting chance.

I'm not saying they would have made it, but they did deserve a chance.

Clearly you have not heard of salting a hash. That's what stops the rainbow table attack you describe.

On the other hand, going through my DNS history is a violation of my privacy and I'm not going to play this game.

Of course I'm not.

But seriously, am I the only one who doesn't give a shit?

Look, don't code. Don't encourage your kids or students to code. It'll make those who do more valuable. Do mechanics worry about everyone on the planet knowing how to fix their car? Do carpenters spend countless hours navel-gazing about bringing carpentry to school children and girls and the average CEO? Do HVAC specialists?

Do whatever the hell you want to do. The fewer who want to code, the better for the negotiating power and leverage of coders and technologists going into the future.

It has been at least suspected that smoking caused cancer for about one hundred years, now.
It has been widely known, including the Surgeons General warning, for at least fifty years.

I am long past the point of having any concern for people who can't kick the smoking habit or are ill from it (other than simple human sympathy for anyone suffering, of course). Unless you are at least 70 years old, today, there is no excuse for you to have any real smoking problems. You know it is going to kill you, today. You knew it would kill you, when you started. We are almost to the point where anyone with even the slightest "well, I didn't know back then" excuse for smoking is dead.

Anyway, this is sad news. I know that Nimoy is in his 80s. I know he has lived a full life. However, I have been dreading his passing. As many people my age likely have, I've a mental list of older guys whose passing I'm sure to be alive for and who are going to really gut me. He's one of the guys on that list.

It's painfully clear that whoever holds the reigns at Slashdot these days just wants it to become another Engadget/Gizmodo/whatever. Just dump the existence community, revamp your site, and get on with the 78 cell phone news stories per day and native-advertising.

To quote Chester "Snake" Turley: "Oh no, Beta."

I wish we could all correlate these stores, in some way, to actual companies. I don't deny that this awkwardness exists, but in twenty years working among a lot of women (and various nationalities, sexual orientations, and trans*) I have only heard of two negative stories from one close female friend in the late 90s and never witnessed any sort of this behavior. As just a completely rough guess, I would say a quarter or even a third of my colleagues are female. Their gender is never relevant. it is never made relevant. Their advise, contribution, and insight is never questioned because of their gender. They are at every level of the ladder from front desk secretary to security to janitorial to customer service to tech support to sales engineer to engineering and development to research to helpdesk to IT to human resources to management to CFO.

I'm not dismissing that it is a concern in some areas of the industry, perhaps. I'm not dismissing the fact that certainly some individuals have individual experiences that impact them (though I don't think those experiences can be said to certainly be constant for everyone). I'm just saying that I've been an adult working with adults in an industry where they all act like adults and it is difficult for me to get a real picture of where these places are in the tech industry that jobs are being denied based on gender, educations are being denied, promotions are being denied, or people with something to contribute are being told to shut up or ignored or something. Are these all young people in startups with no experience acting like its still a frat-house and sorority or something? I mean, a woman coder in (in my experience in this industry) would be about as much a curiosity to myself or anyone I work with as a coffee pot in the break room.

So you're posting to slashdot from the grave.

I'll admit, we've all probably known the girls who go to college and use it as a "find my future husband" utility and then never actually do anything with their education or career as soon as they graduate, marry the guy they met in college, and have kids -- but they're hardly representative of the whole and I've *CERTAINLY* never heard of, say, girls attending the local linux group to score some hot rich sugar daddies.

I'm going to play the safe bet and assume your comment was sarcastic.

So you want your daughter to be a tech blogger that quotes press releases from the latest cell phones and tablets and throws out occasional tech tips or howtos for a living? Regardless of gender, the whole gizmodo/engadget type of profession doesn't really qualify as a STEM career in my mind. It's like saying that someone assigned to reporting on local crime for the local paper is in the law enforcement career.

If people really need role models (I don't really know why they do, but okay), then maybe someone like Jeri Ellsworth would be a more compelling one? Someone who doesn't make her living regurgitating current tech news and subjects for a crappy blog or youtube videos, but actually -- you know -- makes stuff. Using a strong engineering and mathematical and science background to do so.