Posts by James Grant

US Navy achieves '100 mile' hypersonic railgun test shot

since the sinking of the Bismarck, really...

As a nit pick, I'd say it has been since the sinking of the Bismarck (hobbled by an air-dropped torpedo) that planes have been seen to rule the seas.

Tesla Motors: Our cars don't burst into flame, but our emails do

.. I was going to order a Tesla ..

.. and burn up the road, but then I read your article. Now I'm afraid to cancel - Ms. Konrad will berate me!

Futurologist defends 'malevolent dust' warning

reader

I think the author was too dismissive of this idea. Ian Pearson just seems to be taking what's possible now and extrapolating based on past improvements. Also, invention involves trying a lot of ideas that don't pan out so you can be sure people will try doing this. Lastly, invention is all about making progress. You can't undiscover something but if you try, you will make improvements.

Online trading site was left wide open

More than one to blame

In many high-profile disasters (like airplane crashes), there are several things that must fail for the disaster to happen. If any one of failures not occured, the disaster would have been prevented. That's what I see happening here. In order for an insecure system to ship, every person who recognized it wasn't secure had to have "drunk the Kool-Aid" and not stand up and say this was a fatal flaw. So the developer should not be let off the hook.