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Yep, Compared to this the Prius is a real Rube Goldberg device. I'm surprised that they went that way with it. Too much unnecessary monkey motion.

> Microsoft executive Goldberg bristles at the notion that little innovative work has come out of the Windows group since XP.

This executive's first name wouldn't happen to be Rube, would it?

- Tony

Here is a video model of the joint in action. Frankly, I can't help thinking of a Rube Goldberg machine when I look at it.

I would prefer to believe that Apollo died because the people in charge were too short sighted to see its use as a good heavy lift vehicle. That, and all the dirty politics that continues to plague the industry in general. The shuttle went to the lowest bidder(ok, the expendables also) and the funkiest design. I saw some of the other designs in various press releases. There were at least five different concepts. Two of them looked better than the present one. But, the bean counters ruled the day... If we had kept the Apollo program running, we would probably have zero mission fatalities to this day. It was that good. Well, with less than 15 launches, who knows? When I watched an Apollo launch, I always expected them to get back safely. The design just looked sound. With the shuttle, I never know what to expect. It really is a kludge, and it looks like one. The Apollo guys always had a workable escape system during all phases of the launch. The shuttle obviously isn't so lucky. Landing the Apollo was almost a "set it and forget it" affair. Set the right angle of attack and pretty much let nature do the rest. Ballists is ballists, right? The shuttle needs all sorts of vigorous control all the way down by very fragile electronics, the failure of which is almost sure to bring disaster. I am not against the idea of reusable space craft. On the long run, it will be more economical and reliable. But let's do it right. Let's at least build something a bit more robust. Rube Goldberg has no place here. And another thing, How come those dopes never decided to build the space station out of the external tanks? Talk about a waste...

Do you mean Rube Goldberg ?

LK

Rube Goldberg's inventions

Try to remember that the shuttle is a Rube Goldberg machine of the worst kind. We got stuck with it because the public was convinced(how could they know otherwise? Actually they had no idea what was going on during the design process. How much it would cost, etc. They were never asked. Probably for good reason) that the proper design made with the proper materials was too expensive, so like most gov't projects, it went to the lowest bidder that came up with a real mess. The thing was a dangerous contraption from the start. I don't have much hope for the next one under the present circumstances.

And all of these pay homage to the old Rube Goldberg cartoons from the early 20th century.

Yes he would.

Myself and about 15 of my friends recently entered one of these contraptions into the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Purdue University hosts the national contest every year where winners of several different regional events compete to have the best working, most complicated Rube Goldberg machine. This year the task was to remove two old batteries from a flashlight, replace them with new batteries, and turn the flashlight on. Former tasks have been casting a ballot, making a cup of coffee, sharpening a pencil, and many more. There is a minimum of 20 steps to complete the task and the machine has to fit in a 6 ft. cube (I belive). Machines also usually have a theme which their machine is based on. Our particular machine had a theme of Las Vegas with all the various steps involving differet Las Vegas casinos, with the Luxor being our flashlight (a light at the top of the pyramid). The winning machine this year at the Purdue regional was a very impressive work of engineering. Of course, the winners had put 3600 man hours into their machine. I believe their theme was space.

If you have a chance to participate in the Rube Goldberg contest, I would recommend taking it, because it is a really good experience.

Most of Rube's stuff wouldn't actually work (too many variables, like the reactions of animals), but was funny to look at. Fiscli and Weiss's work wasn't funny, but it is amazing that it actually worked.

Specifically look at the gallery with all of his drawings. Man, how come this is the only post about Rube Goldberg? I could be wrong but I think that he was responsible for creating the idea of these elaborate contraptions which do some simple task in an indiect overly complex way. It is no surprise, he was an engineer at Berkeley a while back.

Rube Goldberg would be proud!

Sure. Right here.

Rube Goldberg generally works pretty well for HS-aged teams. They reward smart engineering, creativity, and allow students to express themselves to a certain degree. There's a national contest that you could contact, but I don't know of any reason you couldn't run your own version on a smaller scale if that'd work better for you.

...it's kind of a Rube-Goldberg device when there are robust IPSec and SSL implementations for just about every platform out there. For the infrequent connections mentioned in the article - server administration, employees submitting documents from unknown remote locations, etc. - the extra CPU overhead of IPSec or SSL wouldn't have a significant impact.

Of course, you could combine port knocking with packet- or session-encryption but if you've implemented that correctly then port knocking doesn't buy you much extra security IMO.

Well, I'm not an electrical engineer (IANAEE?), but the fact that disturbing the system in Ohio affects things in New York indicates that the machines and networks are not independent. A and B are only independent if fiddling with A cannot affect B. Those "ad hoc interconnects" make it a single system. Just because it's not engineered at the system level doesn't mean it's not a system. There are continuous electrical connections, made up of many components (transmission lines, transformers, generators, etc), connecting all the pieces of the grid. It may be a Rube Goldberg machine, but it's a machine.

If these lawyers were engineers, there designs would look like this.

Two words: Rube Goldberg

-jhon

Once again, people deciede to miss the point.

I have a Firewire equiped PC and a DV Cam. Yeah, I can do this just as easily. I have the added step of having to launch my favorite capture program before I hit the capture button. Perhaps you can educate me, but I realy, realy don't see what makes a Mac better than a PC for graphics and dv editing. People always go on about how easy it is, but it's easy on the PC too.

But this is all besides the point. PC OR Mac, it's not easier than HTML, and, I'm sure the idiot BLOG programs that I see everywhere make it even simpler. It takes seconds to update with text. I don't have to render a video stream. I don't have to do any editing beyond proofreading, and spellchecking. Upload is near instant. Download is too. And people can read it at their liesure. What advantage does video bring to the table? A bit of cool factor and loss of the ability to search, browse, etc. It's still easier for me to look in the index of a book than it is to look for a specific point in a DVD, even if I've seen it before. Yeah, there's technology that can catalog speach, etc. It's quite imperfect, and again, we're missing the point, even if they were 100%, what do I get out of the massive drive space, processor power, DB space, and everything else involved that makes this superior to text?

This is like an online Rube Goldberg Machine. I just don't get the point.

Taking the obligatory look at the forever cached version of lavarand.sgi.com reveals a little information. Granted, the cool images are definitely not there. A pity.

However, checking the above link reveals that the digital photography technique did not involve such interesting processing as determining transparent vs. opaque. Quoting:

The digital output of the image is then munged by an algorithm, which compresses and scrambles it. Thus the 921,600-byte image is transmogrified into an 140-byte "seed."

The technical description mentions the use of SHS-1 and then the Blum Blum Shub pseudo-random number generator. Not being familiar with such subjects, it does seem that this is even more Rube-Goldberg like than a 'simple' image processing which determines opacity.

Slightly off-topic, but imagine the merging of this technology with the whimsical, counter-intuitive machines of Rube Goldberg. The nanosprings could be combined with nanoballs, nanochutes, nanoratchets, nanopteradactyls, etc... to fabricate imaginative contraptions that would only be visible to high-power microscopes.

Big Business is like a Rube Goldberg "Money-Making Machine" where Windows is an essential interdependent part deeply embedded in the system. As long as there are known inputs, and money (profit) comes out the far side of the contraption, nobody wants to touch the internals (ie Windows installs) since that would risk breaking the machine and stopping the flow of money.

One exception might be an efficiency expert who wants the machine to pump out more money using fewer or less-expensive parts, and he's going to do a Risk/Reward analysis for any proposed changes to the contraption. Swapping out Windows with Linux is going to come up VERY risky if Windows connects with too many other parts (including end users). The strength of this "lock in" for any one part is proportional to the number and value of the other parts it connects with. This value usually FAR outweighs the cost of a "software maintenance" contract, and thus Microsoft becomes entrenched or "locked in".

For Linux to effectively overcome Windows lock-in for the most important parts of the machine, it has to be seen as a low risk alternative. This means it has to become MUCH closer substitute for Windows than it is today. Right now the gap is too wide, which leads to a high risk assessment for the Linux option. This is the single largest hidden cost of "free" software. It's not "free" if it risks breaking an operational Money-Making machine.

Also since humans are inevitably parts of these contraptions, they also have "RTC" (Resistance To Change) factors. In a case where there's high RTC factor, *any* new part is going to risk being rejected like a bad liver, just because it's a change. This further reduces "free" software's applicability.

When Linux can be seen as closer and less-risky substitute, it will enjoy much more success in ousting Microsoft from their trenches.