Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] the poetry of donald rumsfeld

[Robin Farine]

Tom Lord wrote:

> But the thesis put forth in that web link?  I dunno.  My recollection
> is that you could _see_ the micro-course-corrections in the seconds
> before impact, implying a human driver.  And, while airplanes can
> pretty much land themselves, doesn't that rely on the transponders
> around runways?  I have to ask whether or not automated navigation is
> really _that_ precise over manhatten at low altitude.
It does not seem impossible to me that some guidance instruments 
dissimulated in town suffice to let the plane "see" a nice runway 
instead of Manhattan. Maybe not so realistic after all. What I find more 
suspicious for instance is why no fighter came to intercept the planes? 
I thought that any point in the US can be reached by a fighter in about 
15 minutes. For some reason, I just had the impression that not much 
effort was invested to prevent this disaster because some people could 
somehow benefit from it. Anyway, as I already said, my point was not to 
defend this thesis against another. Let me try to elaborate.

Not unlike a software project, life on earth belongs to the kind of 
games where collaboration between parties is necessary to have a good 
and successful game. By collaboration I mean that each individual has 
his ideas, some good some less good, and communicates with other 
individuals in order to elaborate an appropriate and generally accepted 
solution to a given problem.

Ideally, in a software project involving a few teams such as managers, 
architects/designers, developers and testers, each team collaborates 
internally to solve problems localized to its domain. Inter-team 
collaboration concerns more abstract goals, maybe scheduling the next 
release or ordering high level tasks. In any case, the ultimate goal is 
the success of the project. If something goes wrong and instead of 
trying to isolate the problem to find a solution, teams start to compete 
to decide which team should be blamed and punished, this does not solve 
anything but rather compromise the whole project. Also, if for instance 
a manager reads a computer journal during the week-end and comes on 
Monday inspired telling the developers how they should implement this or 
that part of the design, it does not qualify as useful collaboration. 
Obvious.

Sadly, what constantly happens in life looks like these obviously wrong 
way of handling a software project. Masses blindly follow small groups 
of powerful people even if such groups generally do not act to improve 
the mass' quality of life, which should be the ultimate goal. Driven by 
some kind of mental illness, these groups rather use (sacrifice) people 
to increase their own power/bank account amount. So, instead of 
collaborating individuals or teams solving well delimited problems, we 
act as huge groups of people each behind its own simplistic view of the 
"absolute truth" trying to impose it to other groups. It does not work, 
the short result is an endless fight & retaliate scenario.

OK, I stop before I write things even more confusing, if possible. So, 
in case someone is interested, the link below points to a review of a 
comprehensive work on how and why we humans behave like we do and how we 
could improve things.

http://www.southerncrossreview.org/26/matherne-bookreview.htm

At least while reading the book I often had the "ah!" signaling that 
something that I already knew becomes something that I understand 
(thinking about it, I should read it again).

Robin