I'm a space
nut; I'll freely admit it. To quote science visionary Carl Sagan "This is
the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space." It's what we as
human's do – we started out in caves and went to look over the next hill, then
the next continent, then across the seas and mountains. Now it's time to go
forward.
But space
travel is risky. NASA used to approach design by making the safest mechanism
possible and then redesigning it to make it safer. It was a good approach but
didn't help a lot of dead astronauts, most recently the tragic deaths of the Columbia
So the news
that Virgin Galactic has got a licence to build spaceships is deeply heartening
– it shows an adult attitude to risk. Let people make the best bet they can on
security and trust their judgment.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/1752201&tid=160&tid=103&tid=187
What has
this to do with computers I hear you ask? Well plenty. There's no such thing as
safe computing any more – as more and more people get computer savvy we're going
to see more problems. But the internet is possibly the most important invention
since the printing press and to stop using it because of security fears would
be as stupid as deciding to turn our backs on our future outside the gravity
well.