

How hackers ruin everything with computers - dsplittgerber
http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/how-hackers-ruin-everything-with-computers/

======
ZoFreX
> Revolutionary jets like the SR-71 or the 747 took months to design.

Yes, and without computer assisted modelling, when they wanted to try out
something - say, reducing trim drag by moving the center of gravity further
aft - they had to just try it out in the field. That experiment killed one
pilot, and it's a miracle the other survived. What caused that death? Engine
unstart. Why was unstart a problem on the SR-71? Because its analogue
computers couldn't always keep up.

All in all a spectacularly bad example, CAD would have saved lives, and
despite his ranting it DID have a computer on board, and when that was
replaced with a digital computer system it increased the reliability and
safety of the plane.

Here's the story from the survivor if anyone's interested:
<http://www.alexisparkinn.com/sr-71_break-up.htm>

~~~
waqf
From the link:

> The next day, our flight profile was duplicated on the SR-71 flight
> simulator at Beale AFB, Calif. The outcome was identical.

This seems to belie your argument.

------
danielh
_Does anyone believe a modern Benz will be able to drive for 1,000,000 miles
the way old ones regularly would? I don’t._

I think this has to do with the advances in material sciences and engineering.
My theory is that parts in old cars were massively overengineered because the
variation in quality was so high. If you wanted _most_ of your cars to last
100,000 miles, you had to construct a car to last 1,000,000 miles. Nowadays,
you can probably get away with constructing a car to last 200,000 miles.

Can someone with the right background comment on this train of thoughts?

~~~
danvet
The problem is more one of cost and efficiency. You can still run your care
for 100k of miles (the 1M miles is fiction, imho). But when e.g. the engine is
broken, you don't fix it anymore but replace it wholesale. Less hassle,
guaranty on the new part by the manufacture and generally cheaper: The old
engine gets sent to the manufacturer for refurbishment by people only doing
this (and hence more efficient than your run-of-the-mill mechanic).

Furthermore you can't fix a car do-it-yourself-style anymore because these
things have become way more complex. So running a car _way_ past it's
economically sensible lifetime (if you'd factor in the labour cost) is simply
no longer possible.

And even old cars totally overengineered do fail all the time (my brother has
a bunch of them). But since it's usually just for leisure, labour cost doesn't
count. And because the parts are simpler it can usually be fixed.

So I'd blame this on the massively increased labour cost/car cost ratio. Go to
a country with really cheap labour and it all works like it did here half a
century ago.

~~~
danielh
You bring up an interesting factor I didn't really take into account. It
probably makes no economic sense to run a car for 1M miles considering the
high costs of labour. The question is whether it is possible to run a modern
car for so long with somewhat reasonable maintenance, or if it will die with a
fatal engine failure.

We will see in about 15 years, whether the modern taxis of today still serve
as taxi in lesser developed countries.

Fun anecdote: I recently sat in an old BMW taxi (I guess early 80s). The
mileage indicator showed about 50,000 km, which is way to little for any taxi.
The indicator had 6 digits. My guess is that it reached 999,999 km, overflowed
and started again at 0.

------
famblycat
I bought my phone for the non-phone features, sure I'll admit it. In fact, I
never had a use for a cellphone until you could browse the net on one. When
that came along, I was all in. For me it's not a parlour trick, it's the
primary reason I have one.

------
rubidium
"I make no secret of the fact that I think real technological progress has
slowed in many fields, possibly even reversing itself." states the author at
the start. That's very hard to defend.

However, let me boldly agree in that I think this is true for qualitative
change, but not quantitative. I think quantitative changes are rapidly
happening, and that's because it's very easy to generate better answers from a
set of pre-existing knowledge. Computers (plus their engineers) are very good
at that. It's the whole premise of the Semantic Web.

The hard thing to do is generate a better set of existing knowledge, and then
curating it well. As (perhaps mis-used but I'll use it anyways) Picasso said
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

------
jpitz
The fine author brags about how he could access the internet on his
calculator, and sneers at people who buy phones to do the same?

------
RyanMcGreal
The author's rant is mostly crotchety nonsense, but it was worth it for the
link [1] to Harry Plinkett's hilarious and spot-on critique of Star Wars
Episode III.

[1] <http://www.redlettermedia.com/plinkett.html>

------
relix
It'd be interesting to know the price drop over time of the cars. I'm sure
that cars nowadays are more cheaper than back when they could get a million
miles, so the comparison doesn't work.

