Category Archives: Technology and Society

A Consensus Of Experts

The very notion is misguided:

While the author comes across as supporting the consensus, the paper presents some insightful perspective on the ‘consensus enforcement’ by the establishment and why a substantial portion of the public is not buying the expert consensus on climate change. It boils down to a lack of trust, and concerns about deceit, conspiracy and groupthink.

Where do these concerns come from? Climategate and explicit advocacy by scientists are two obvious sources. Disagreement portrayed in the media and distrust of the government’s politicization of the issue are others.

Yes, the lack of trust and concerns are well justified.

Virgin Galactic’s New Direction

I’m not sure what to make of this article on their switch to small-sat launches. I don’t think they want to give the impression that they’re backing off on the tourism goal. I will say I found this comment of George’s a little ironic:

This service compares to Pegasus, Virgin Galactic’s rival in the satellite launch market. “Nasa is the only real customer for Pegasus,” claims Whitesides. “It typically buys a Pegasus once every two years at a price of around $50m for a payload in the order of magnitude of 250kg. We offer the same payload at a fifth of the cost.

Other start-ups entering the industry make similar claims. New Zealand-based Rocket Lab’s flagship engine, Electron, is designed to send payloads of 100kg into space for just $4.9m, while Texan outfit Firefly Space Systems claims that it will offer “the lowest launch cost in its class”.

Whitesides pooh-poohs the idea that these new outfits will undercut his rates: “It’s easy to say that you’ll charge a price for a product before a product is built. We have assembled a group of people that have built rockets in the recent past and what we will offer will be unprecedented in terms of cost and access.”

Emphasis added.

And this is a weird statement:

Unlike SpaceShipTwo, which has been designed in partnership with Scaled Composites, LauncherOne belongs exclusively to Virgin Galactic and could prove an intellectual property goldmine.

I don’t think IP is an issue here. Either they’ll have a launcher that the market finds useful at the price, or they won’t.

Big Brother In Redmond

This seems like a good reason not to enable Cortana:

Section 7b – or “Updates to the Services or Software, and Changes to These Terms” – of Microsoft’s Services EULA stipulates that it “may automatically check your version of the software and download software update or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices.”

And they decide what is and isn’t “authorized.”

Got A Drone?

Here’s now to fly it by the FAA rules.

I’ve been thinking about picking up a cheap quadcopter just to play with, but probably not one big enough to require filing a flight plan.

[Late-morning update]

Man versus drone versus the law:

I personally like some of the quirkier aspects of old English law. I think limiting self-help against drones to thrown T-shirts would make a wonderful common law rule. If you can take it down by throwing a T-shirt at it, then it’s too damn close. If not, then tough luck.

“Excellent. We could call it the rule of ‘quod tangit tunicula.'”

Heh.