Posts by Johan Bastiaansen 523 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2007
The Germans thought at one point only the best kit would hold the Russian hordes back. Turns out quantity has a quality all its own and they should have produced more simple and reliable tanks instead of the behemoths they fielded.
Russia is like Burkina Faso with nukes. It simply doesn't have the economy to take on EU Nato states, even when we don't have the support from the US.
The lower operating costs means Gripen pilots will be trained better. And in the end, it's the combination of the machine AND the human in the cockpit.
Also, what capacity does the Gripen not have? It can't drop nukes on Moscow?
WAIT ! ! ! Aren't we supposedly a defensive alliance? Why would we have to nuke Moscow then? Or more realistically, drop the nth nuke on the smoldering ruins of what once was Moscow.
And China, Pakistan? Isn't the US supposed to take care of them? Isn't that the whole reason why we're in this mess?
No, we have to deal with Russia and we do NOT need an overwhelming European army at our borders to protect us either. John von Neumann will be rolling in his grave. That will just start another weapons race at a huge financial cost for everybody. We need just enough to deter them or hold them back until our far bigger economy churns out the tools to drive them back.
a bit more preparation.
Don't just go in there and wing it.
Was it a big hardware sale? Why did they send the untrained techie then? Why couldn't he be bothered to fire up the GUI before and gave it a little test drive.
These companies are going to code self driving cars now and they assure us they have their most competent people on it . . .
How about people who mail a foto
...
in a word document.
Or an offer,
in a word document.
How about someone working in administration in a school, who was sent a list of pupils in a word document (of course) pouring over pages and pages looking for one student. I leaned over, pressed CTRL F. She shrugged and said, learn something new every day. And yes, that school does provide computer lessons.
How about meeting someone working in administration in a school who's showing you she's going to send you an email and you sit there as she's indexfingering the entire email and she finishes by making three typos in her own name, and each time she DELs out all the way to the typo and tries again. Someone could literally have tripled her productivity by setting up her signature in outlook. This was they same school that provides computer lessons to anybody ... but their own staff obviously.
How about getting and email from your bank, containing a PDF file that you had to print, fill in and sign by hand, scan and mail back to them. I'm assuming someone would have to type it into their computer on their end. Then getting an email from them a couple of weeks later asking to vote for their website and declare it was the best banking website in the country?
This was not in the previous millennium. One of those was only a couple of months ago.
My friend told me this. The company he's working for is being "integrated" with 2 others. They all use different software and it will be replaced by completely new software. As the firms have different maintenance contracts for their current software, management has cleverly optimized the transition, so they will save 30.000 € on maintenance invoices.
This means that nearly 100 people will have to be trained with the new software twice. You heard that right, they're going from software A to software B, then finally to software D in a period of six months.
Oh, and also the database will have to be converted twice.
"The historic accident record would indicate that, as far as aviation is concerned, that is in fact correct. The problem is you don't see the accidents that would be happening if all landings were made manually."
Why would you say that? You seem to think that most landing are done on autopilot. That's not correct, most landings are done manually. Usually, only landings in poor weather conditions are done on autopilot.
Also, take into account that pilots are blamed, even when it's blatantly obvious that it's the precious autopilot who crashed the plane. So you can't trust the historic accident record either.
Another fine example of pilots fighting the automatic controls, losing the fight and paying with their lives.
And finally being blamed by the people who designed and/or approved the faulty system.
What makes this even more bitter is that pilots were ordered by management to use autopilot while landing. Because every non-techie knows that complex automated systems are for more trustworthy than trained professionals.
"It can't really be blamed on the averaging."
No, it can and should be blamed on averaging. Averaging two similar inputs is appropriate. Averaging two very different or even opposite inputs is clearly a mistake. This was an error in the system.
Because the system was designed and approved by people who were later asked to decide who was to blame, they decided to blame the pilots. But they shouldn't have been allowed on de judges seat, they should have been in the booth of the accused.
It seems we humans are simply not capable of building complex and robust systems.
Yet non-techies, like politicians, managers and other fools, are very impressed by complex systems, probably because they are very expensive.
"This is a bit like the Air France flight 447 crash. Where the aircraft was "averaging" the inputs of the two pilots - whose cockpit discipline had broken down and were both trying to fly the plane at once. This is a situation that can't be allowed - and the automation shouldn't allow."
This really is a no-brainer. One of the pilots is called the captain, the other is the called the co-pilot.
The software must be designed by morons, there is no other logical explanation.
Find them, throw them out of a flying helicopter.
NEXT!
You will see the quality of the software increase dramatically.
"The prosecutor was quite open about this, he said that "Microsoft wants his head on a platter"."
That's an admission of guilt right there. The prosecutor is not working for Microsoft, he's working for the state.
If he's taking orders from Microsoft, he should be fired and prosecuted.
You guys sold him the entire system, set everything up, but didn't hook up the printer.
You had one of these "ooh, I'm so smart" techie guys over there who just knows for sure he doesn't have to test or explain anything. Didn't you?
You say that, but.
They're morons who are making lots of money behaving like morons. So not so stupid after all.
The real morons are the companies who give them their money to piss of their customers.
Are these the same morons who explain to us that the reason the economy is in a slump because our wages are too expensive?
Yes, but they only only do that because they think we're even bigger morons.
How stupid do you have to be to think that we're morons?
Pretty stupid indeed.
You say that, but.
These morons are also making lots of money.
So who's the moron now?
We can question the ethical standards of our allies (technically they are not), but such is the nature of compromise.
This will set back a diplomatic solution, if it doesn't make it impossible.
Why were we carrying out this airstrike so deep in Syrian territory, with Syrian military in close proximity, just days after the agreement? Surely the Russians were in a better position to deal with this as they probably have a direct com link with these Syrians.
One of my clients was a company, run by two brothers. One of them died. I made a note of that in our CRM software, indicating he shouldn't be contacted anymore. That comment got removed by HQ and they continued to contact him. The company complained to me and I put the note back in. Again, it got removed by HQ and they continued to contact him.
I put the comment back in with a warning to a Dutch twat and the physical damage I had in store for him if he removed the note again.
So they deleted him as a contact person and with that went all information, emails, visits and contracts that were linked to him.
is that they have all very logical and sane explanations on why they have come to such a stupid decision. And they are determined to repeat their mistakes if given the chance. That's why a firing squad is an optimal solution, also because we don't want them to procreate.
1. It DID override the pilots, it should have automatically disengaged when the pilots throttled up, instead it throttled back down. You admit as much, but you blame the pilots for "neglecting to disengage the commanded autothrottle and let it resume control, not noticing that the thrust levers moved back to idle when they took their hands off." So you're expecting the pilots, in a very stressful situation, to actually FIGHT the system that is supposed to support them. While letting off the hook the people that have designed a basically flawed system, sitting comfortable at their desk. POOR DESIGN.
2. So sending the correct invoice is more important to these companies than knowing where their plane is. Again, only to crazy people this makes sense. Just because they wear a tie and are able to speak coherent sentences in English, that doesn't make them any less crazy, just more dangerous.
3. "the warnings triggered as designed but because the horn sound used isn't unique it confused the flight crew into debugging the wrong problem". Confusing error messages eh. Well I guess that makes it alright then. No it doesn't. Are you saying there is no digital screen in this entire cockpit where they could put this vital information on. In big red blinking letters? So they're drowning the pilots in useless information and obscuring the most urgent information available. But somehow that is pilot error, instead of what it obviously is? POOR DESIGN.
4. What is more likely, a single mad men at the controls or the only sane person at the controls.
Let's face it, it's designed by a committee. All the good pilots are flying the planes, and all the crappy pilots, and a couple of accountants and MBA types are sitting in the committee. And they are also the ones shouting "pilot error" when everything falls apart.
Very clever? I wonder.
I remember a Turkish airliner where the pilot was effectively overruled by the automatic pilot who decided the plane had already landed so it simply refused to continue flying. So it crashed short of the landing strip in Schiphol. Of course, that was decided human error as well, because hey, the pilot is always in control right. In my opinion: poor design.
Not squawking useful information like location, heading and speed: poor design.
No warning when the automatic oxygen system isn't activated: poor design
The autopilot deciding the plane has already landed because an altimeter shows a reading that's blatantly wrong: poor design.
Deciding to shut the cabin door with only one pilot at the controls: stupid! Whoever decided this should be put in front of a firing squad. Live ammo for me please.
Blaming the pilot for this: incompetents covering their ass.
"the lack of a squawk that said something useful about location and status is something that is trivial to remedy" Why is it squawking only gibberish and not something usefull then. Surely a couple of coordinates, heading and speed every 15 minutes doesn't take to much bandwidth?
Helios 522 "the pilots hadn't seen that the oxygen system was not activated" Gee, and nobody ever considered putting a warning on a vital system?
"and the remaining pilot turned the pressurisation mode to manual". A "kill all the passengers button" can be very handy indeed. Could I get one installed in my car you think? Or would that raise eyebrows?
So again, who designed this?
