Re: Film Lover's Lament

In article <fYiUf.8659$vy.4793@trnddc01>, Jeremy <jeremy@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Gregory L. Hansen" <glhansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

To be fair to the digital guys, the Department of Defense, and the defense
and aerospace industries in general, are very conservative and tend to be
slow to commit to new technologies.
--

I find it rather incredible that you would dismiss the procedures that have
been established by experts--with just the proverbial wave of the hand--as
though they were a bunch of people that are unable to keep up with progress.

You are expressing opinions as though they were fact.

Ask anyone involved with military and aerospace technologies and
they'll tell you. I ventured the opinion that I did because that's what
they told me, it's not something I figured out for myself. But for an
example, NASA only recently sent off a space probe with an ion drive,
despite decades of experience with that technology. And navigation
computers still rely on the extended Kalman filter algorithm and will
continue to do so for years to come although other techniques like the
square root unscented filter is far better and has little additional
computational cost. It's not so much a philosophy that can't keep up with
progress, but a philosophy that you shouldn't replace a proven technology
with something new and different unless you have a compelling need.

And why they heck should they "keep up with progress" if they already have
a solution that's working for them? You say that as if "keeping up with
progress" is an intrinsic good that shouldn't have to be subjected to a
cost/benefit analysis, and that any institute that doesn't "keep up" is
somehow flawed (or as if I should think so).

I'm just pointing out that DoD procalamations don't necessarily mean it's
the best that can be done. It just means that it works for them and they
don't see a good enough reason to change.

--
"Very well, he replied, I allow you cow's dung in place of human
excrement; bake your bread on that." -- Ezekiel 4:15
.

Relevant Pages

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