Saturday, May 21, 2016

Words mean different things to different people

A few years ago (OK many years ago)  McDonnell Douglas Aircraft company was celebrating the first flight of their new aircraft, the fabulous MD-11.  A bunch of movers and shakers were invited to witness the flight from an auditorium in (I think) the Engineering Center in Long Beach.  (Nobody could really witness it in-situ, unless they were in a chase plane.) They had all sorts of stuff live on the giant screen in the auditorium.  I happened to be there on other business, and they graciously invited an engineering ragamuffin like me to view the showing.  The MD-11 took off from a field East of Long Beach and proceeded out over the Pacific Ocean so as not to be over populated areas.

 The Computer room, filled with Cray computers was just across the hall from the entrance  to the auditorium.  Suddenly, the screen went blank.  No sound.  No image.  There were all sorts of rumblings in the auditorium.  The door to the Auditorium flew open and a young geek shouted into the room "We've crashed."  After a few heart attacks in the McDonnell family and management, he amended that statement to the computers have crashed and could not process the telemetry.

This is a posting in praise of a truly great company.  However, even the greatest company is at the mercy of it's lowest geek.

This posting was brought to mind because of a moronic commenter's statement on a popular blog asking why we should even carry black boxes on aircraft if we couldn't immediately retrieve them after a crash.  Someone see that the moron gets an invite to the Engineering Center where they recover and refurbish the  black (orange) boxes to be read.  Those engineers and techs are truly awesome in what they accomplish!

Monday, May 16, 2016

The Net Is Rigged Against Conservatives

Most of the middle-of-the-road or more conservative discussion sites have now switched over to facebook or other social media sites for commenting.  They will not let you contact them or complain.  They will not talk to you about how to ameliorate the situation.  Hot Air, Instapundit, and similar sites require you to use Facebook - you know the site controlled by Zuckerberg, the Facebook owner who censors conservative postings.  Facebook holds the position of a "common carrier" but they spend their time trying to control the political spectrum - in favor of  "progressives."

They say,  "all you have to do is join facebook," and you can post on their sites."   What's wrong with that?  Would you like to trust your personal data to a political operative and a site that is in the business of censoring people like you.  If you go to the sites mentioned, you can see they are much diminished.  They are filled with political shills and operatives, and other obvious morons.  Because of the posting limitations, their site comments go forward without any other views.  Most of the commenters that have supported these sites for the last dozen years are no longer posting, including me.  Thanks Ed and Glenn.  Good businessmen!

Site comments, in my humble opinion, should be a contract between the site owner and the commenter.  Why should an honest site demand the commenter go through a biased third party to make coments to the site?

If anybody is interested, here are a few interesting blogs that accept your comments directly:

Small Dead Animals
Day by Day
the Diplomad