This is a common occurrence in many fields with a high technical bar. Usually, the person with the "plan" has a pretty high opinion of themselves, which may or may not be justified. I see a lot of "genius children" (labeled by their parents) with big ideas that just need "a few things" worked out to have their Invention built and make a ton of money for them and their parents.

To give an example from a nerd hobby forum, it's common in an amateur ROV group I frequent to get questions from new members, usually teenagers, saying something like the following: "I have a great ROV design that will dive to 5000 feet, be small enough for one person to carry and use, and will only cost $10,000. It can be used for (insert random phrase describing any "cool" ROV use here). I have the design almost done and I'm going to take it to various companies to get the manufacturing done (read as: try to get someone to buy my design and give me lots of royalties) and I just need details on a few things. First, can someone tell me how I can seal a motor against water getting in? Second, I plan on using outdoor extension cord cable with fiber optics inside for communications, can someone tell me where I can order this online? Third, I'm going to need a special caulk to seal the wires where they enter the hull of the ROV, where can I buy that in a small tube for under $10?"

Usually the person doing this has drawn up a couple pictures or mock-ups in a CAD program or even a modeler like Blender or Maya. They've usually picked a use for their ROV without understanding anything about how the use relates to design, specifications, or capabilities. If anything they've designed their model with superficial features that make it "work" for the use intended, like drawing in an arm with a sawblade on it "for cutting off damaged well heads". Note that I'm not talking about an actual design, they've just drawn a picture of a (possibly) cool looking ROV, spending as much time on the paint job as the shape.

The thing all the people that do this have in common is a very human attribute - they want to believe they are special, that they are geniuses, and that they will be able to make a living/get rich/get famous without having to do it the way "ordinary" people do, through education, luck, and hard work.

That's not a horrible fault, but usually they don't want to hear that the "great design" they have, no matter how detailed, is in fact the "easy" part of creating something like they want. They don't want to hear they're not a genius and that what they want isn't simple. They interpret you telling them that it isn't that simple the same way they'd interpret someone saying "I'm not smart enough to do what you're asking" or "We big industry guys don't like to listen to new ideas". Heaven help you if you try to actually produce a quote for the work they want you to do.

People like this are why the term "hubris" exists.

If it's a kid I try to encourage them to keep thinking great ideas, but to get some education in what they want to do. If they just won't listen, sometimes I just ignore them and let them find out on their own that they're dreaming.

The same thing works for non programmers designing software. They are great if they know they're designing a user interface or interaction, and that what they want may not be possible. That kind of perspective can really help a deep technical person produce a great product. If they're convinced they have a product ready to go and that all that needs to be done is write some code, it's the same Hubris. They probably won't listen. Just ignore them unless you have the patience to get them to understand (for example, if you're a social worker or a canonized saint).

It's always amusing when a new pundit discovers exactly how the Internet actually works.

Until they gain enough technical knowledge to be dangerous, they assume that the Internet is just as Hollywood portrays... A rock-solid utility run by the Government that only PhDs and arcanely skilled teenage geniuses can control or understand.

Then they discover just how "fragile" it is, and start telling the people who've been making it work all along that they need to straighten up and fly right, or else a major disaster is going to happen. Good thing they told us.

It's sad that they can't just say "Oh, I guess I didn't understand.". Instead they have to "take charge" of things because otherwise they'd have to accept their own irrelevance, or even (gasp) accept that despite their new-found expertise, they *still* don't really understand.

So straighten up, Cisco... it's obvious to this guy you don't know what you're doing. Fix that BGP thing and do it NOW, you hear him?

I know exactly what their positions are and whom they report to, thanks. I'm not unaware of who they are, I just believe different things about how much power and influence they have.

If you think they lead in any direction on their own, your thinking is kind of naive. Their jobs are to bring recommendations and direction from their departments to the president, bring his directives back down to their organizations, and give their organizations the political and resource support they need to do the actual work.

Despite the prestige and apparent power associated with their positions, they are the very definition of middle managers.

Mr. transportation secretary making a comment about this issue when he's obviously voicing his own beliefs is silly... it's just wishful thinking. There'd be a lot more news items about this if it was a serious direction DoT was taking, and even then they'd have to involve other organizations like the FCC, someone to represent the automakers, the ACLU for those citizens offended by their choice to use the phone in the car being taken away, etc.

Him stating that this will happen and expecting people to believe him because he's the sec. of transportation is like the secretary of the interior announcing that all national parks will become paintball courses. He'd be involved in the discussion, but it's obvious to anyone with one brain cell that he can't do it on his own and there's no way the necessary others would agree to it.

So, it's just one man shooting off his mouth.

He doesn't directly set policy or rules, he doesn't legally lobby for legislation to set rules, and the fact that he's only around for four years or (max) eight means the career govt. employees at the various agencies can stall and block him until someone else is appointed if they disagree with anything he does.

He's not where the rubber meets the road nor is he highly placed enough (despite the title) to set government direction. He's a go between for the actual leaders and the departments who actually do the work. All the power he has comes from talking to people to try to get them to do things. Hence, middle manager.

"Government official shoots off his mouth about his personal crusade, makes little sense"

Honestly... this guy, even if quoted correctly, is just saying what he'd do if he had absolute power over the law, because of his personal feelings on the subject. What he wants to do really doesn't matter. Despite the fact that he's apparently in exactly the right position to get this done, if you think about it he's basically a middle manager in a paralyzed government.

Does anyone remember when people in the US government at least tried to make an unbiased decision about whether a law or idea was good based on facts?

It seems like the kids of the Greatest Generation are destined to be one of the worst generations...

Heh... so I'm either depending on "magic", which won't work because magic doesn't exist, or I'm using a method that generates toxic waste, and therefore it won't work because I'll have disposal problems. Sounds a lot like you're looking for justification for a conclusion you've already reached, instead of the other way around. Just because you can't imagine how to do something doesn't mean it won't work.

Technology not invented yet isn't the same as magic, and as you note it isn't the same as "real world" technology... because it's NOT INVENTED YET. See how that works?

Specifically I was thinking of maybe using the nanoparticle sorting technologies that have been developed in chip size for materials analysis, or maybe a centrifuge based sorting process with the waste liquified. Maybe even building macro scale robotic sorting devices to separate waste at multiple scales. There are many, many approaches, and fortune awaits the first person who comes up with an economically viable one.

Also, there's nothing wrong with using a lot of energy, just like there's nothing inherently wrong with spending a lot of money, if the result is a net gain. If we remove more garbage (solid, liquid, and gas) from the world than we add, we're moving in the right direction.

Interesting... you're assuming a specific method of recycling then proceeding to poke holes in what you believe I'm suggesting. This is an excellent example of a "straw man" argument.

What I'm actually suggesting is a technology that isn't developed yet... machines that could separate any given item into its component parts with a high degree of accuracy and speed. This may mean a process where the first stage is "chop it into small bits" or it may not. There are other approaches.

Yes, it'll take energy. Just about everything does :)

.. build a machine that's capable of disassembling laptops (or other electronic waste) into its component materials for recycling.

Bonus: The technology would be worth millions, because there's many years of old electronic (and other) waste sitting around to be had for the taking, including in landfills and other locations. The problem with trash is that no one likes to separate out the organics from the recyclables from the re-usables. We humans don't even like to throw trash away in multiple places (like keeping a separate recycle bin and compost) so letting us be lazy and having the machines do the sorting is a big win.

Ultimately manufacturers must make sure their products and packaging are environmentally friendly as possible, of course. It would also be nice if they designed the products to be disassembled and reassembled, making repairs easier (repair instead of replace generates less waste).

It's probably unrealistic to expect products to be 100% landfill free through... new products take advantage of new materials and technologies, and the ability to dispose of something new cleanly always lags behind the ability to produce and use it...

Erik

It's hard to draw a line arbitrarily, given the varying skills of new graduates, but most folks coming out of the better business schools in the last 6-8 years have a good handle on what works in the Internet age.

Of course, it'll be years until enough of the old guard retire from officer positions in the really big media companies for the newer generation to get a chance to run things...

I'm pretty much convinced that the current generation of managers and corporate officers in media companies are just not capable of changing enough to forge a new business model in the internet age.

A while ago I would have predicted that they'd eventually have to give up their attempts to slow the change, or to find ways to keep their pay for content models working the same way, and eventually start experimenting to find something new or listen to their younger, more flexible peers.

Now, however, I'm thinking that they just can't change... change in their companies won't happen without a rollover of management, like in so many other organizations run by the "me" generation. They won't give up and they won't give in. They'll have to die off.

More to the point of the article, I predict if all news articles get charged for from the wire services, there'll be a period of rampant ignoring of the fee, followed by a period of cut and paste disguising of the origin of an article, or paraphrasing to hide a source, followed by independent sourcing of news from readers local to a story, and maybe eventually a new kind of news reporter, whose business model I don't know, but who travels the world collecting news to publish on the Internet.

Maybe in some part of all this we'll get back to unbiased, true news reporting and not political spin. I hope so.

"Recommendations by the NTSB to the FAA have gone unheeded for many years. With all of the technological advancements that we work with in the IT field, what sort of best practices could be brought forward in transit safety?"

Answer: None. You're asking a bunch of people who presumably have IT experience to play armchair engineer and second guess the designers of embedded systems that are designed not only to record data on aircraft controls, time, and position, but to permit recovery of that data if the aircraft explodes, burns, falls into 2000 feet of water, then sits for a week. It's apples and oranges. Despite the fact that it seems like IT has rapidly advanced technology and the flight recorder tech is far behind, it's only a perception.

The true answer to "How could flight recorder tech be made better?" is both obvious and deceptive. It's easy for us to say things like "record all the controls, temperature, position of people, cockpit video, etc and live uplink it to the internet" and on the face of it have that seem like a good idea.

But probably very few of us here have experience or knowledge with the type of data that is useful in an accident investigation. Would cockpit video be more useful than audio? Other than allowing us to view people about to die or crash, it might not give us new information. It might be more useful to track flight controls and engine efficiency, or weather conditions, or the attitude of the flight attendants.

What problem are we trying to solve here? Just because technology can be "upgraded" doesn't mean it should be. Remember, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you are expert in is IT technology....

Get ahold of a few hundred small frameless hand mirrors, and epoxy putty them to the inside of the dish so they reflect on a mirror size target in the center.

You can either place a Stirling engine's hot section in the center or use it to solar cook just about anything, or even put another mirror there to reflect the light somewhere else where you lens it onto a high efficiency solar panel.

Power and heat, cheap.

Despite the fact that they are involve the public more directly and more immediately than any democratic or community based voting or collective decision making system has in the past, internet sites where visitors decide on something still rely on honesty and impartial decision making (with respect to the purpose of the vote) by the voters in order to produce a non skewed result.

Like any voting process whose outcome is meant to reflect the "will of the people", voters must vote only once so everyone has an equal voice, and no voter must be unduly influenced by biased interests. To correctly reflect the views of everyone on the internet, a vote would have to include a significant random sample of internet users, which is impossible. Further, due to the nature of the Internet and web sites, even detecting a biased, stacked or invalid vote is nearly impossible.

While this is obvious to some, it's worth stating explicitly that just because a voting process takes place on the internet doesn't mean it's fair and balanced, and just because something is posted on the internet doesn't mean that it's true.

It can be a shock to those who believe humanity is a step away from an internet based golden age of online government where corrupt bureaucrats and overpaid staff are eliminated, but the internet is just a better way to communicate than we've had in the past. The value of communications has always depended on whom you are talking to :)

Erik

I don't quite know where to begin with this strategic suggestion for Microsoft from an armchair CEO.

Microsoft is a successful vendor of OS software. Partly this is due to their products' quality, but largely it's due to inertia, already having market dominance, having some rather aggressive, predatory business practices, and generally operating in an ethical gray area.

It's rather sloppy thinking to believe there's only one kind of corporate success, IE if Microsoft is a Big Company, and it takes a Big Company to make and sell a product like a cell phone, then Microsoft ought to be successful at making and selling cell phones.

Thinking like that ignores a lot of major differences between Microsoft and eg. Nokia. Differences that include knowledge of the cell market, good relationships with cell phone network companies, a service and support organization that would have a much larger customer base than Microsoft's software support apparatus, higher costs for manufacturing the product, larger exposure to risk from having more physical inventory vs. just having CDs and manuals, lack of design expertise in the area of phones and lack of management talent for running such an organization.

Also, the cell phone manufacturer space is crowded. If they're manufacturing physical phones they're competing with national and overseas companies that are much better at making phones than they are (initially and for the near term). They'd start at a disadvantage, something they're historically not good at.

Saying that since Microsoft wants to dominate cell phones with Windows 7 so they should start making phones is like saying Goodyear wants to dominate the car tire market so they should start making cars. You're suggesting a company that is good at something car related should automatically be good enough at making cars to dominate the market.

Finally, I believe Microsoft has a history of making MS hardware devices with few successes. The MS mouse and keyboard are exceptions. The Xbox could be considered a failure except as a loss leader for selling software (games). In some quarters their hardware produces a profit, but it's tiny compared to the profits from software. Certainly not enough to gain market dominance like the article suggests should be possible for phones. How many people do you know that own Zunes?

"The longer shutdown could be a chance for US scientists working on the Tevatron at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, if researchers there can persuade lab management to keep the machine going instead of shutting it down in 2011 as currently planned."

Try to wrap your head around this: this is not an "us vs. them" situation. It's not a competition. If you're cheering for one "team" or the other you're performing a psychological trick to fool yourself into feeling good.

If either group of scientists successfully discovers new knowledge that improves our understanding of the world, everyone gains. Sure, any scientist wants to be the first to discover something important, but most scientists know that if they've made a contribution to the whole effort, they're as responsible for progress as the man who has the "eureka!" moment.

If you're hoping the American site does it before CERN because you're American, and then you get to feel good for your team "winning", why are you doing that? Why don't you try feeling good or bad about your own life, instead of identifying yourself with national or international physics projects so you can cheer them on like they were a sports team or political party?