Friday Forum

End-of-workweek gabfest.

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Alabama has executed Nathaniel Woods, a prisoner convicted of capital murder for the 2004 killings of three police officers, despite a national outcry over his case.
    …………………….
    The execution proceeded despite the co-defendant, Kerry Spencer, supporting Woods’ innocence. The pair were sentenced to death for killing Birmingham police officers Carlos Owen, Harley Chisholm and Charles Bennett as they swarmed a suspected drug house.

    At the time, the prosecution alleged Spencer opened fire after Woods told officers he was surrendering, making Woods a willful accomplice – a crime punishable by death in Alabama. One officer who survived testified he saw Spencer standing in the doorway and shooting in his direction.
    ………………………………
    Authorities say Spencer was the lone gunman. He also confessed to the crime in a handwritten letter provided by his attorneys this week.

    Spencer wrote in the letter: “Nathaniel Woods is 100% innocent. I know this to be a fact because I’m the person that shot and killed all three of the officers.”

    Spencer was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. No execution date has been set for him.

    So attempting to surrender is an offense punishable by death.

    1
  2. Mikey says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    So attempting to surrender is an offense punishable by death.

    He was a black man in America. That’s all that was necessary.

    4
  3. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Mikey: So true, “surrendering while black”.

    2
  4. OzarkHillbilly says:

    It appears that after celebrating Biden’s strong showing on Super Tuesday, Wall street came to the realization that trump is still president:

    US stock markets closed sharply lower again on Thursday as fears about fallout from the virus outbreak sent more shudders through the financial world.

    The Dow Jones sank 968 points, or 3.6%, wiping out most of its surge of 1,173 points a day earlier. Treasury yields sank to more record lows as investors plowed money into low-risk investments.

    2
  5. Bill says:

    Business headline of the day-

    Costco says it’s getting a lift from coronavirus panic shopping

    I believe it. There is a Costco less than a mile from my wife’s workplace and less than a mile from where I lived April 2015 to March 2019 (I used to walk to the store sometimes and the wife would pick me up on the way home) and we heard from people we know that there has been panic buying of water and paper products in recent days.

    On Wednesday I was in BJ’s (We used to shop at Sam’s, a store less than two miles from our current home, but it closed in 2018) and the store while busy looked to be stocked on those products.

    Dear Wife and I do Costco shopping on Sunday mornings. We are outside the store when its doors open.

    1
  6. Scott says:

    @Bill:

    I went to Costco last night for essential supplies (wine). The small mountain of paper towels and toilet paper was gone as were the cleaning wipes. Interestingly, there was a lot of Clorox bleach available.

    1
  7. sam says:
  8. Kit says:

    @Kathy et al: I didn’t get a chance to say this in yesterday’s forum, but for those using Chrome on a PC, I suggest trying the Reader View extension. Once installed, you should find the extension icon around the far-right side of the address bar. Navigate over to a page you wish to view, and simply activated this without bothering with swatting down anything that jumps in the way. Voila, all the crap associated with today’s browsing experience disappears: ads, pop ups, cookie warnings. You get gloriously unformatted text along with the images associated with the article. While you will still want an ad blocker in order to speed up loading times and limit some of the worse tracking, this extension will give you the sort of experience that you are likely looking for.

    3
  9. OzarkHillbilly says:

    NYT:

    FLORISSANT, Mo. — In his eight weeks on the job, Boeing’s chief executive, David L. Calhoun, has come to one overriding conclusion: Things inside the aerospace giant were even worse than he had thought.

    ……………………………………….

    “It’s more than I imagined it would be, honestly,” Mr. Calhoun said, describing the problems he is confronting. “And it speaks to the weaknesses of our leadership.”

    Boeing’s previous chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, was fired in December after presiding over a series of embarrassing setbacks that culminated in the shutdown of the 737 factory this year. Mr. Calhoun formally took over in January, but he has been involved in this mess from the beginning. A protégé of Jack Welch from his time at General Electric, Mr. Calhoun has been on Boeing’s board since 2009, and was elevated to chairman late last year.

    “It’s not my fault! It’s not my fault!”

    Before becoming the chief executive, he vigorously defended Mr. Muilenburg, saying in a CNBC appearance in November that Mr. Muilenburg “has done everything right” and should not resign. One month later, the board ousted Mr. Muilenburg and announced Mr. Calhoun as his replacement.

    “Boards are invested in their C.E.O.s until they’re not,” Mr. Calhoun said, sitting in a dim conference room at the Boeing Leadership Center, a corporate campus outside St. Louis where Mr. Muilenburg’s photo is still displayed prominently

    “It was all great! Really, it was! At least until it wasn’t. But nobody could have seen this coming!”

    Now that he’s in charge, Mr. Calhoun has become more willing to openly criticize Mr. Muilenburg. He said the former chief executive had turbocharged Boeing’s production rates before the supply chain was ready, a move that sent Boeing shares to an all-time high but compromised quality.

    “I’ll never be able to judge what motivated Dennis, whether it was a stock price that was going to continue to go up and up, or whether it was just beating the other guy to the next rate increase,” he said. He added later, “If anybody ran over the rainbow for the pot of gold on stock, it would have been him.”

    Mr. Calhoun and the rest of Boeing’s board never seriously questioned that strategy, in part because before the first Max crash off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, the company was enjoying its best run in years. What’s more, the board believed that Mr. Muilenburg, an engineer who had been at Boeing for his entire career, was so deeply informed about the business that he was a good judge of the risks involved in ramping up production.

    OK, how’s about what motivated you? You weren’t applying any brakes on your way to the pot of gold.

    “If we were complacent in any way, maybe, maybe not, I don’t know,” Mr. Calhoun said. “We supported a C.E.O. who was willing and whose history would suggest that he might be really good at taking a few more risks.”

    A perfect example of corporate governance at it’s worst. A seenoevil/hearnoevil/speaknoevil board who went along for the money making ride until people foreseeably dying because of the shortcuts they took affected share prices and then all of a sudden they were just the people to fix it all.

    2
  10. MarkedMan says:

    Trump has abruptly cancelled a trip to the CDC today. How much you want to bet we have moved from Trump Phase 1 to Trump Phase 2? Phase one is “This is all about me, and there’s nothing here except an attempt to make me look bad!” Phase 2 is “This is all about me and all you skanky f*cks are covered in germs! I’m locking myself in Trump
    tower wearing a gas mask and putting shoe boxes on my feet* and not letting anyone near me!”

    *A point to the first to name that reference

    1
  11. Bill says:

    Florida election related headline of the day-

    Clermont woman charged with falsifying voter records

    BTW- I got another Bloomberg mail yesterday. Will there be more?

  12. Bill says:

    @Scott:

    I went to Costco last night for essential supplies (wine). The small mountain of paper towels and toilet paper was gone as were the cleaning wipes.

    If a Costco store ever ran out of Rotisserie chicken, it might be CBS evening news material.

    2
  13. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Kit: & @Kathy

    Another Chrome ap and I believe there is an equivalent Firefox version, is Quick Javascript Switcher. The allows you to turn off Javascript for the website you are on with one click. Activate it or deactivate the ap and the page will reload. With Javascript turned off you get the site in basic HTML meaning plain text and some pictures. Sidebar adds will appear, but no gifs, video or audio will run. If you don’t want to completely turn off Javascript, there is an ap that will Disable HTML5 Auto Play.

    1
  14. KM says:

    @MarkedMan:
    Meh, he wishes he could pull of Hughes’ “eccentricities”. He’d end up like Mr. Burns demanding Smithers get in the model instead.

    *now off to watch said episode at work instead of morning meetings. Thanks Disney+!*

    2
  15. Michael Cain says:

    Colorado’s first “presumptive positive” coronavirus patient has been identified, and is being treated in a suburban hospital a handful of miles down the road from me. Came in from Italy through Denver International Airport and then up to the ski resorts, so presumably this will spread rapidly…

  16. Sleeping Dog says:

    David Brooks is offering up his usual pablum on the Establishment saving itself and Joe being the last chance.

    He says of Biden program if he wins in November

    There would be no choice but to somehow pass his agenda: a climate plan, infrastructure spending, investments in the heartland, his $750 billion education plan and health care subsidies. If disaffected voters don’t see tangible changes in their lives over the next few years, it’s not that one party or another will lose the next election. The current political order will be upended by some future Bernie/Trump figure times 10.

    Of course he never mentions that the Moscow Mitch McConnell Rethugs will need to reverse their aversion to working cooperatively with a Dem president to accomplish this.

    6
  17. Jax says:

    Don’t know if you guys saw this or not, but there were two separate massive accidents on I-80 in Wyoming this last week, within 3 miles and a few minutes of each other. 140 vehicles involved, total. 4 confirmed deaths. The pictures/videos are insane. Took two days to clear the road.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=82&v=L3_b7hLy5Zk&feature=emb_title

    1
  18. Kathy says:

    @sam:

    I’ve been running it since shortly after it started. Since 2012, I moved it from the PC to a tablet, where it ran while charging, and then to a phone.

    There are other distributed computing projects, though. I’ll look for one or three after march 31st.

  19. Bill says:

    Florida headline of the day-

    These Disney mouse ears cost $78 and people will buy them

    Count me out. I wouldn’t pay 78 cents….

  20. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    @Bill:
    Not shocking that it was a Republican committing election fraud.

    1
  21. Kathy says:

    @Kit:

    Thanks. I’ll definitely try that.

    As I recall, Firefox has a reader mode. I used Firefox for years, until one version for some reason keep freezing at odd moments and effing up the whole OC. So I switched.

  22. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    273,000 jobs created in February.
    Expectation was about 100,000 less than that.
    Does anyone think this administration is credible?
    Trump wouldn’t fudge the data, would he?
    He actually called the BLS numbers fake about 19 times before he became President.

    1
  23. Kit says:

    @Sleeping Dog:

    Disable HTML5 Auto Play

    I rarely visit sites that auto-play video, but that’s perhaps the single most annoying thing a website can do. How Chrome cannot offer an option to disable this is beyond me. Thanks for the tip!

  24. reid says:

    I’ve noticed there’s been talk about ad blocker extensions. I used to use uMatrix, which was powerful but a hassle to use. I’ve switched to Privacy Badger, which seems to do a good job by default and is still somewhat customizable.

  25. OzarkHillbilly says:

    The Zodiac Killer has been a mystery for 50 years – but one man thinks he’s solved it

    In docuseries The Most Dangerous Animal of All, Gary Stewart claims his birth father was one of America’s most notorious serial killers

    The second half of the series interrogates Stewart’s story and, notably for those invested in the Zodiac mystery, forensic developments from a limited DNA sample held by the San Francisco police. “Overall, the big question mark around this was: is Gary right? And are we going to solve this?” said Davidson. Without spoiling too much – the investigation and questions of Stewart’s identity as a man with a mission come to a dramatic head in the second half of the fourth episode – it’s safe to say that the team reached some conclusions.

    But Dinerstein and Davidson maintain the show is much more than another stab at the mystery of the Zodiac’s identity; rather, it’s a show investigating the legacy of abandonment, the question of genetic inheritance and what happens when an obsession becomes an identity.

    Given the lack of an airtight full DNA sample from the Zodiac killer, “I don’t think [his identity] will ever actually be solved – I don’t think there will ever actually be real closure,” said Dinerstein. But “this story is so much more than just a Zodiac true crime show. It’s about a man searching for his own identity, and recovering from trauma, this primal wound, that he doesn’t even remember.”

    Looks interesting.

  26. Mu Yixiao says:

    @Kathy:

    Might I recommend Folding@Home? It runs protein folding simulations to help find cures for a wide variety of diseases.

  27. Jen says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    But Dinerstein and Davidson maintain the show is much more than another stab at the mystery of the Zodiac’s identity;

    I probably would not have used that particular wording.

    2
  28. Kathy says:

    @Mu Yixiao:

    I just might.

    Along with SETI@home on the phone, I also ran Rosetta@Home for a while, which also involved protein folding. about a year ago, give or take, it stopped sending out new work.

  29. MarkedMan says:

    @KM:

    he wishes he could pull of Hughes’ “eccentricities”

    Ding! Ding! Ding! [Buys you a virtual beer]

  30. Bill says:
  31. Kit says:

    On the subject of ad blockers, some of you might be interested in installing a firewall on your phone that is specialized in privacy. It is absolutely nothing for them to block 10k requests per week, each request trying to call back home and inform the mother ship of some aspect of your life.

    Lockdown seems to be a good free option on iOS.

  32. just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Point e: W Nathanial Woods is black.
    Point Two: We’re talking about Alabama here.
    So yes, attempting to surrender while black is a capital offense in this case. How would it be anything else?

    1
  33. mattbernius says:

    Trump on FoxNew:
    Trump praises himself on coronavirus response: “I think we’re in great shape. … I think we made a great move. We closed it down, we stopped it.”
    Source: https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1235945470813495298

    I know supporters are going to scream “context”, but if things break bad with COVID-19 in the US, these on-video statements have the makings of a “read my lips, no new taxes” moment.

  34. Jen says:

    I wondered why #mathishard was trending on Twitter.

    Now I want to cry. How does a mistake that obvious even get made? The trend towards illiteracy and innumeracy is depressing AF.

    2
  35. just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Bill: We still have Bloomberg ads on radio here in the Portland, OR market, too. I assume that they will continue until the ad buy period is over as most music radio up here is automated tape run.

  36. Moosebreath says:

    @mattbernius:

    “these on-video statements have the makings of a “read my lips, no new taxes” moment.”

    It strikes me more as Bush the Younger’s Mission Accomplished picture, in that he gives the appearance of declaring a crisis over before it actually was.

    1
  37. Teve says:

    @Jen: trend?

    1
  38. Jen says:

    @Teve: Touche.

  39. Jay L Gischer says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: A couple of points about Boeing:

    1. When Calhoun says “weakness in leadership” I respond with “You think?” because of the leaked emails, etc. I see an engineering culture more interested in political hits than in doing good work.

    2. It saddens me to see that Muilenberg was an engineer, but they are, contrary to the opinion of many, still human beings. What he was doing was working great, until it wasn’t. That’s the nature of pushing up close to the line. You never know exactly where it is, and you can go across very easily and get away with it for a while.

    3. I’m prepared to be fairly empathetic with a board who thought that a lifelong CEO understood their supply chain and manufacturing process well enough to not cross that line. Boards work for the company maybe a few dozen hours a year, after all. They aren’t going to do a deep dive, that’s why they hire a CEO.

  40. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    @mattbernius:
    Mission Accomplished

  41. just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @mattbernius: Sadly, coronavirus is not about taxes going up, so not a single MAGAot will give flying f”k about what Trump said that was inaccurate. Take him seriously, not literally, donchakno?

  42. mattbernius says:
  43. Michael Cain says:

    @Jay L Gischer:
    Among other things, Boeing appears to be another in a long line of companies where upper management fails to recognize that software has become one of their critical capabilities (see also, Starliner). It’s been a bit over 40 years now since I became the systems guy tasked with telling all sorts of project managers at Bell Labs, “It’s a software world. Your projects aren’t going to be late and over budget because the hardware doesn’t work, they’re going to be late and over budget because the software is f*cked. Get used to it. Learn how to manage software.” It has never been a popular message.

  44. Michael Cain says:

    @just nutha ignint cracker:

    …so not a single MAGAot will give flying f”k about what Trump said that was inaccurate.

    Wait until they have to explain to the kids why they won’t be going to Grandma’s for Christmas this year…

  45. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    Fox News Blonde:

    “…you don’t cut something in entitlements, you will never really deal with the debt…”

    Talking Comb-Over:

    “Oh, we’ll be cutting…We’re also going to have growth like you’ve never seen before.”

    3
  46. Teve says:

    @Daryl and his brother Darryl: Well we haven’t seen it for three years.

    2
  47. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    @Teve:
    I feel like there should be a Stormy Daniels joke about growth, or lack of, here.

    1
  48. gVOR08 says:

    @Michael Cain: I’ve managed projects marginally involving software and always wondered how the big boys accomplished managing efficient creation of code and quality control. It’s perversely comforting to find out they’re not very good at it either.

  49. Bill says:

    Almost in my backyard

    Small plane crashes in Boynton Beach neighborhood

    By the crow flies, this place on Miner road is at most a half a mile from where I live. I was working out when this at the fitness room when this crash happened.

    From 1989 to 2019 I lived (We weren’t lined up with any runways but you would hear planes buzzing overhead sometimes) no more than a mile from this airport*. In my time living there, there were a couple of plane crashes but nothing that came this close to us. Plus one averted disaster when a commercial passenger jet lined up with one of the airport’s runways mistaking it for Palm Beach International!

    *- If you look at the airport photo at Wikipedia, the place I lived from 2015 to 2019 is clearly showing to the right of the road that runs parallel to an airport runway.

  50. Just Another Ex-Republican says:

    @Michael Cain: In fairness to Boeing, I don’t think anyone including big players like Microsoft and Apple have actually learned how to manage software projects yet either. One of many reasons I’ve gotten short-tempered with my coworkers over the years. The way the same sorts of PM and QA mistakes get made over and over and over…I’ve been joking for years that at this point the “Best Practice” recommendation for a software update project is “Don’t start one.”

    2
  51. Liberal Capitalist says:

    @Michael Cain:

    Colorado’s first “presumptive positive” coronavirus patient has been identified, and is being treated in a suburban hospital a handful of miles down the road from me. Came in from Italy through Denver International Airport and then up to the ski resorts, so presumably this will spread rapidly

    No. Don’t jump to overreaching conclusions.

    I’m a Colorado resident as well, and the message being communicated here is that the individual that came to Colorado from Italy was not exhibiting symptoms until well into his ski trip.

    As the chance of transmission is far lower if the individual is not symptomatic, the risk to those on the plane, in Denver airport and even those who met him in the first few days is limited.

    Clearly, we have much to worry about generally, but I strongly suggest that we not go overboard.

    My wife was freaked: She thought that he could have stopped on the way up, and that exposure could be quickly passed… I reminded her that we don’t need to look at a likely statistical outlier as something that we need to panic about.

    As for me, I love downturns and panic. so far I’ve moved money out of bonds and into broad market, and specifically bought a serious chunk of AAL (American Airlines).

    Like when I bought banks in 2008, I’m OK with risk (even though I’m “old”). But still, I’m also the guy last week that was stocking up for a three week meal plan set aside for the worst, and discussing pandemic stats.

    Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Guess that’s one of the things that makes me a Democrat.

    2
  52. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    @Liberal Capitalist:
    Gov. Cuomo announced an attorney in Westchester tested positive, and infected 11 others.

  53. Bill says:

    @Daryl and his brother Darryl:

    Gov. Cuomo announced an attorney in Westchester tested positive, and infected 11 others.

    The attorney in question works in Manhattan the same place where is a patient at the hospital my wife’s sister works at.

  54. Michael Cain says:

    @Liberal Capitalist:
    I’m generally a pretty positive guy. Still, it’s almost certainly not if, but when it gets loose in Colorado. CDPHE released basic information about case 2 today: a woman from Douglas County who flew home after being on cruise. The statistics for the disease will change over time as testing gets better — mortality will come down, but R0 will go up.

    China appears to have largely got their spread under control. It took them a couple months, and draconian means: shut down factories, preemptively shut down schools, quarantine a city of 20M, other drastic internal travel restrictions, built thousands of beds of new hospital capacity for isolation, and ramping up to producing/using test kits at a rate of 1.5M per week.

  55. Michael Cain says:

    @Just Another Ex-Republican:

    I’ve been joking for years that at this point the “Best Practice” recommendation for a software update project is “Don’t start one.”

    I’ve been messing around trying to extend one of the old engineering sayings. Something along the lines of “Civil engineers build targets; mechanical engineers build weapons; software engineers build mistakes.”

    1
  56. Kathy says:

    Hachette axed a pedophile’s memoir.

    On the one hand, that’s good. On the other, what possessed them to sign a deal with Woody Allen for a memoir?

    Oh, I know: money.

    Don’t they have enough? Can’t they make more any other way?

  57. Jen says:

    @Daryl and his brother Darryl: That is one hell of an efficient disease-spreader. Most modeling estimates–and data from China–suggest that a single person will infect around 3 others. What did the attorney do, cough on the buffet?

  58. Michael Cain says:

    @gVOR08:
    We know, in large part, how to build reliable software. The problem is that it takes a long time and costs a lot of money. That’s not surprising — a large, distributed, real-time software system, for example, will be among the most complex things humans construct. Immense numbers of failure modes that have to be accounted for. So we generally build it on the cheap.

    1
  59. Mu Yixiao says:

    Jianbing is the BEST Chinese food EVER (YouTube).

    I don’t have speakers on my work computer, so I don’t know what people are saying, but just watch the first minute or so. THIS is what I miss from China. SO Yummy!

  60. just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Michael Cain: I’m not sure why “the Democrats refused to support Trump’s efforts to control coronavirus” will affect their opinion of Trump (or that of their children, either), but if you think it will…

  61. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    SXSW, the big music festival in Austin, has been cancelled because of the virus.

  62. Bill says:

    Apparently a member of the NY Times editorial board and MSNBC host can’t do simple math.

    500 million divided by 327 million is over one million. And people say Joe Biden is losing it.

    2
  63. CSK says:

    @Kathy:
    If the book was to be published in April, that means that copies of it already exist in warehouses and are waiting for shipment. They’ll all have to be pulped, I assume.

    I don’t know what kind of advance Hachette paid Allen, but I’m assuming it was high six figures-low seven figures.

  64. Michael Cain says:

    NASA announced today that they would be embedding some of their own software people into the Boeing Starliner development team. It appears that there will be a substantial increase in the amount and type of testing that will be required. NASA also said that a decision on whether to require Boeing to repeat the unmanned test flight to the ISS may not be made for months.

    Like I said, everybody tries to do it on the cheap.

    2
  65. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    And the surviving copies will sell on eBay…

    Contracts usually come with cancellation fees. So I assume Allen will get his payday anyway.

  66. Kathy says:

    @Michael Cain:

    Hm. Do you suppose SpaceX might be doing better at this because Musk has a tech background? I mean, he ought to know about software.

  67. CSK says:

    @Kathy:
    One article I read said that HBG was returning Allen’s rights to him, so they may ask for the advance to be returned. I don’t know. In 2003, he had a multi-million dollar deal with Penguin for his memoirs, but canceled it.

    I’m sure advance copies are floating around in the form of review copies, and I would think they’d become collector’s items.

  68. Jen says:

    @Bill: That was what I referencing in the #mathishard comment above. For some reason, it got downvoted–not sure why (but am not going to invest any more thought into it, I just thought it was a weird thing to get prickly about…)

    I get that people make mistakes, but wow that was a big ‘un.

    1
  69. gVOR08 says:

    @Bill: Yeah, I saw that and was going umh, y’all slipped a few decimal places, while Brian Williams droned on. To be fair, it was the fault of talking head who threw it out. On the other hand, if Williams weren’t innumerate he wouldn’t be the successful cocktail party, horse race tout, useless political analyst he is today.

  70. gVOR08 says:

    @Bill: During Rachel Maddows interview with Warren at Warren’s home the dog wandered in and started chewing on Maddow’s notes. MSNBC put a banner under the dog – Bailey, dog, D-Massachusetts.

    1
  71. Jen says:

    NPR reporting that Mick Mulvaney is out.

  72. Michael Cain says:

    @Kathy:
    Here’s how I describe it, too briefly and with lots left out. There’s old-school design, where a plane is thing humans fly and software is just there to assist. There’s new-school design — and this applies to everything, not just planes or rockets — where whatever you’re building is sensors, actuators, and a processor running software. The guiding principle in new-school design is to keep the hardware simple, reliable, and modular. Anything complex, like making the modules work together, goes in the software. The corollary to that is the software has to be right. For example, the F-35 is inherently unstable. Software can fly the unstable plane because it can read the sensors and adjust the control surfaces many times per second. If the software isn’t right, the plane falls out of the sky.

    Boeing’s CEOs have been technical people — aerospace hardware technical people. Senior management has been known to say loudly in public that “Boeing is not, and will never be, a software company.” The forensic work on the failed Starliner flight suggests we were lucky it didn’t fall out of the sky. While Boeing was looking to see what had gone wrong on the way up, they found another bug (patched while the capsule was in orbit) that would probably have started the capsule tumbling during the reentry burn and resulted in the whole thing breaking up.

    One of the biggest software snafus I saw in my technical career was done under the direction of a brilliant hardware guy. He had forgotten far more about fiber optic physics than I would/will ever know. But he didn’t have any sort of feel for software, and to be honest, wasn’t really interested in learning.

    1
  73. Jax says:

    @Jen: Hahahaha…..with Mark Meadows. Well, I guess we know why he wasn’t seeking re-election.

    ****Stay tuned for Mick Mulvaney’s tell-all book and Congressional subpoenas!****

    Who else is tired of Celebrity Apprentice: The White House, Season 3?

    3
  74. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Jay L Gischer:

    3. I’m prepared to be fairly empathetic with a board who thought that a lifelong CEO understood their supply chain and manufacturing process well enough to not cross that line. Boards work for the company maybe a few dozen hours a year, after all. They aren’t going to do a deep dive, that’s why they hire a CEO.

    I will never give a corporate board anything more empathetic than a swift kick in the nuts. Those useless cocksuckers get bribed hundreds of thousands a year to rubber stamp anything the CEO says and does. Really? You’re gonna justify this? Fuck. One could pay a room full of janitors, secretaries, mail room clerks, and lab techs, a sixteenth as much and get a far better job of of governance because those low level flunkies actually have a clue as to what is really going on in the company, more so than the head in the clouds rich as fuck, back slapping, cheat at golf, club members that sit on boards now.

    So, tell me again where I was wrong about corporate governance.

    ETA: the threat of prison would go a long ways towards fixing a lot of the stupidity infecting our capitalism. Hence it will never happen.

    1
  75. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Just Another Ex-Republican:

    In fairness to Boeing, I don’t think anyone including big players like Microsoft and Apple have actually learned

    “In fairness, none of them have a clue what they are doing.”

    Wow. Just wow. I wish somebody had cut me such a break during my years of building shit. I could have saved myself thousands of hours of training over the years and just gone fishing or played a few more rounds of golf or what ever.

    And please spare me the obvious “it’s so much more complex” BS. Somehow or other, “This is sooooo complex we’ll never really understand all the different ways it can fuck up, but think of all the BILLIONS we can make with it!” doesn’t sound like an ethos we want corporations following. But apparently it is.

    Dawg, I’m glad I was just a dumbass carpenter. At least I still have a soul.

    1
  76. Kathy says:

    @Michael Cain:

    There’s old-school design, where a plane is thing humans fly and software is just there to assist. There’s new-school design — and this applies to everything, not just planes or rockets — where whatever you’re building is sensors, actuators, and a processor running software.

    From my reading about modern piloting, my take is that pilots fly the plane through the software. Essentially they issue orders to the flight management system, which then moves the plane that way (altitude, speed, etc).

    What I meant about Musk is he first ran software companies.