Look, I understand that we don't want coal factories building next to residences.
Same basic principle just with a different cause and effect. Too much of any single type of business can actually be bad for a city in the long run. The canonical example is a city like Flint Michigan. Flint had a lot of automotive assembly business and the city came to depend on it. Then at some point business conditions caused the companies for various reasons to relocate and the city has fallen on hard times ever since. It might be hard to imagine but it does happen. Plus it can make it really hard to get vital services that aren't provided by highly paid engineers. If the rent is $3000/month how exactly is a janitor getting paid $30,000/year expected to live in that city? It's easy to forget that just because a job doesn't pay well doesn't mean it isn't still vital.
I have no well informed opinion about Palo Alto in particular. I've never been there and know little about the city or its problems. But it is reasonable for a city planner to worry about having too much of the economy and city planning dependent on a single company or single industry.
But where does a city get off telling a person they can't run a business (e.g. sole proprietorship) out of their home?
When that sole proprietorship causes problems. For example if I ran a business out of my house and started using my garage as a shipping dock and having contractors show up daily and basically making the area no longer resemble a residence, my neighbors would be well within their rights to complain and the city likely would take action. If I'm a coder who never leaves the house and basically is quiet as a church mouse then it's unlikely the municipality would care.
If by "downtown" you mean within the city limits then that was true a loooong time ago. But Downtown Detroit hasn't had factories of any meaningful scale for ages. The actual factories tended to be in other nearby places like Hamtramack, Highland Park, River Rouge, and other areas. Detroit's downtown has been greatly revitalized in the last 15 years in spite of what many of you who haven't actually visited may have heard but very little manufacturing actually occurs in Detroit proper. Instead most of it happens in the greater Detroit metro area which has a far larger population than the city itself.
But they are hurting real science. Look at this fucking EmDrive nonsense for example. It is complete crap, but is a distraction.
In all likelihood you are correct about that. Extraordinary claims needing extraordinary proof and all that. It sounds like another cold fusion fiasco to me. But part of science is testing even the seemingly absurd claims. Once in a while something seemingly ridiculous actually works and we learn something new. That doesn't mean we should believe unsubstantiated claims but science does require one's mind to be both open and skeptical at the same time.
Optimism is one thing, but you need to be real: humans will never travel to another star. NEVER. It is too far. Space is big, and time is even bigger.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Yes even the closest star is absurdly far away. The nearest star is about 25.3 trillion miles away (4.3 light years). The technology it would require to get even a probe there much less a human is manifestly beyond our current capabilities. But it doesn't follow that because something is difficult that it is also impossible. I seriously doubt we will even get a human to Mars during my lifetime. But I don't think it is impossible - just very hard. I doubt we will travel to another star system within the next 1000 years. But is it possible? I have no evidence that it cannot be done and neither do you.
You claim to care about science but your aren't using the scientific method. If you want to claim scientifically that we cannot ever get to Promixa Centauri you need to have actual evidence to back that assertion up. Show us how we cannot get enough energy or how there are irreducible problems with keeping humans alive during such a journey or some other problem we have no way to get around. Saying "space is big and time is even bigger" proves nothing about the question.
With lower $/kg to your selected orbit, replacing a satellite is economically possible and building a satellite with a much shorter projected lifetime is probably optimal because the alternative is for the operator to be stuck with 20-year-old technology in orbit
The $/kg to orbit would need to fall quite a lot to make it practical to design less robust equipment. And the difference in cost between a satellite designed to last 5 years vs one designed to last 10 years or more is probably not a linear function and the engineering costs will be very large in either case. To make up an example with bogus numbers even if you cut 1/3 out of the engineering costs it still will be a big number. Even if you can cut some corners by being able to launch more frequently you still have huge cost in engineering until you can standardize the stuff you are sending to orbit to realize economies of scale.
It will happen just like it does in other industries but it's just going to take a while because the starting dollar amounts are so large and the engineering challenges are still being addressed. Plus the economic model for space is still being figured out and it's hard to standardize something if you don't know what the goal is yet.
The other assumption of spacecraft uniqueness is becoming less and less true. Most of the bigger comm satellites are built on a more or less common backplane. The radios are not one off devices.
To a meaningful degree this is true. I would expect some amount of standardization over time and there is some evidence of it happening. But we're still a long time away from spacecraft that are built from parts you can buy from a figurative Digi-Key if you get what I mean. It will (probably) happen but it's going to take a non-trivial amount of time.
Space nutters are usually tech people who are uneducated in the hard sciences
Yet you don't seem to be able to discern who they are. You accused me of being a "space nutter" and I do have a background in hard science and engineering and accounting as well. I've built parts that have actually gone into space. I'm actually largely a voice of caution for those who spout overly optimistic timelines or economic absurdities regarding space travel.
You seem obsessed with that term "space nutter" like others are with hipster and you throw it at anyone who shows the least optimism about space travel. Lighten up. Someone who thinks that someday we might actually develop the technology to go to other planets or leave our solar system is just being optimistic. Nothing wrong with that even if they don't understand the technical details. It amounts to nothing more than fanciful musing. As long as they aren't hurting anyway with their day dreaming what do you care?
Yeah, space travel is an incredibly difficult problem and it will take a long time before we can do really useful things. This is not news.
I own an android tablet but frankly I find most Android devices to be more of a PITA than I prefer to deal with. Most of them come with crapware or annoying custom versions that usually don't improve things. I'm not an Apple fanboi but at least for a phone usually I find iOS less headache inducing. When I upgrade my phone all my stuff migrates with minimal to zero problems. Buy an new phone, sign in and all my stuff downloads just like I expect it to. It does most of what I want without getting in my way. Not perfect but fine. The android phones I've used have been an irritation to put it mildly. Plus each vendor does it differently which has no benefit to me. Getting my stuff from one phone to another is a crapshoot, especially if I change vendors. There are some things I like from certain vendors but it's hard to trust that it will remain consistent over time. Plus Android devices too often never get updates which again is of no benefit to me.
I respect that some people want some features Apple doesn't offer (replaceable batteries, SD storage, etc) or that they don't like the interface or the company. No product is perfect for everyone. But personally I want a nice but relatively simple device for the one I carry around everywhere. So far Apple has fit my needs the best. I'd drop them in a heartbeat if that were to change but so far it's been fine.
Then again, part of the reason that you spent 100m$ on building the cargo, is that the launch was been so darn expensive.
The reason that you spent that much money building the cargo has comparatively little to do with the cost of the launch and everything to do with the fact that you really don't get multiple chances to get it right plus the fact that the destination has pretty much the harshest environmental conditions imaginable. Satellites and probes are expensive because they are (usually) one off bespoke products designed from scratch. If Ford could only sell a single Ford Taurus but it needed to be build to the same standards as the production model you can buy from a dealer you better believe it would cost many millions of dollars.
You could propably build a supercheap satelite with the exact same functionallity for a fraction of the cost using standard parts.
I run a company that makes custom wire harnesses for all sorts of applications. We've had some of our products go into space. The notion that you could build a "supercheap satelite" using "standard parts" is more or less nonsense at present. Maybe in the distant future that will be true but for all but a handful of corner cases it isn't true today and won't be for some time to come. It is possible to design a set of standardized space rated components but we're a long way away from that happy state of affairs for most applications.
First off "standard parts" (stuff you can order from a catalog) are generally not designed with space travel in mind. I buy components daily from distributors and they are designed for particular environmental conditions. You exceed these conditions at your own peril. Space travel is WELL outside of the performance specifications envelope for most off the shelf components. Even for the comparatively few off the shelf parts you can buy that will work, the components are not what really makes it expensive.
Second, even if you can find some components that would work in space you most likely are still building a custom product. I can assure you that a single version of anything custom that has to be right the first time is not going to be cheap. If you want your product to work for any meaningful length of time there are going to be very detailed assembly instructions, designs, reviews, audits, checks, test procedures and calibrations. You have to make sure the whole thing works together even if the components individually would be fine in space. You will spend enormous amounts of engineering time to do even the seemingly simplest things because you only get one chance to get them right. All of this is very expensive. You can try to do in on the cheap and hope you get lucky but in my experience customers who buy components for space travel aren't real fans of trusting to luck.
Third, to reduce costs of engineering you need to be able to design products that can be sold multiple times. Then you can spread the engineering costs across them. I expect that will happen eventually but right now most products intended for space are one off designs so there are no economies of scale to be enjoyed. There will have to be considerable standardization of products before that happens and we're a long way from that right now. Kind of like in the early days of aviation we're still figuring out what works because you don't want to build a lot of something that doesn't work.
Just saying that if the launch prices go down far enough we will see a whole another market of cheap hardware, where the reason for building really expensive satelites or other cargo partly vanishes.
They would have to go down a LOT further for that to be the case. I'm talking almost unrealistically cheaper. Science fiction levels of cheaper. Nothing that is likely to happen in my lifetime cheaper. It isn't the hardware that is the primary cost center in many cases. It's the design and engineering and assembly and test
You might enjoy reading Kim Stanley Robinson's last novel Aurora which muses that life might be a planetary phenomenon
Umm, you are aware that that is science FICTION right? Just because someone wrote an interesting story doesn't make it reality.
KSR was spurred to write Aurora in part by the critical backlash against his idealistic vision of terraforming in his famous Mars trilogy of two decades ago
"Critical backlash"? I read that (very boring) series and there were some interesting ideas in it but it wasn't exactly a scientific treatise. Anyone who took it as one pretty much missed the big picture rather badly.
So if the Singularity never happens and human beings can never transition to machine bodies from biological ones, we're not going anywhere.
And you have a categorical proof of this assertion? If so your Nobel prize awaits.
What the IAU "got the ball rolling on" was chaos. They had a bunch of astronomers telling planetary scientists to use a definition that they disagree with.
So it's up to the planetary scientists to do something about it if they think it makes little sense. All I hear is a bunch of bitching about it but no serious counter proposals. If the IAU decision wasn't scientifically useful then it will be ignored anyway. Personally I think they have a strong point that Pluto belongs in a different category than the rest of the planets. I would argue that they didn't actually take the categorization far enough and so from that standpoint the IAU's decision is flawed. If there is a better taxonomy then propose it and if it makes sense the rest of the scientific community will get on board in due time.
How do you see this as even remotely similar? If you take a shrew from Ohio and you place it in Nepal, does it cease being a shrew and become a dwarf shrew that no longer counts as a shrew?
Actually biologists do stuff like that all the time. There are species that are considered different based almost entirely based on location. I'm not arguing that this is a good or bad approach but it does happen and it's not irrational. Location is routinely a consideration in taxonomy in many scientific disciplines.
Seriously, you're going to cast doubt on the guy who came up with the Stern-Levison parameter that's used to make that distinction?
When he says something igorant, yes I am. If he doesn't think the IAU's decision is logical I have no problem with that. But when he claims location is not a consideration in the taxonomy of any other scientific discipline he is clearly stating something that is not true. He might be an expert on planets but that doesn't make him an expert in other areas.
Pluto is absolutely not "much like" "big rocks", and the fact that you'd make this claim is a profound expression of ignorance on the topic.
You are seriously arguing that Pluto is nothing like other "dwarf planets" or other large rocky/icy objects in our solar system? Curious argument you have there. Heck you argued yourself that Earth and Pluto have a fair bit in common. Pluto is like some other rocky/icy objects and not so much like others. Put it in a category that makes sense and be done with it. If location and size are considerations in that taxonomy then so be it.
Enough with the "we used to think" the earth was flat, humans couldn't fly, etc. We don't. We know physics now. It isn't going to happen
Yes some of us do know something about physics though it sounds as if you might not be in that particular group. To my knowledge there is nothing we know about physics that prohibits us from someday traveling at a significant fraction of C. There are abundant engineering challenges and dangers to be sure but that's a different issue. I'm claiming that there is no known reason why we couldn't accomplish that feat. You are claiming it is categorically impossible. Ergo the onus is on you to disprove the null hypothesis that high velocity travel is possible.
You can always detect a space nutter because they always say "well we USED to think" and then extrapolate that all things are possible.
You can detect a cynic because they claim things are impossible without any actual evidence to back them up. Since you seem to think you are smarter than the rest of us go ahead and show why it is provably impossible for humans to ever travel at a meaningful percent of C. Your Nobel prize awaits if you can do it. Otherwise you can leave your cynicism at the door.
"I think the IAU really embarrassed themselves with this," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Stern leads NASA's New Horizons mission, which is sending a spacecraft to study Pluto up close. "They created a problem for themselves and for astronomy. It [the definition] created an unworkable algorithm for deciding what's a planet and what's not."
While far be it from me to defend the IAU, that is just nonsense. If anything we need better definitions and more categories and the IAU got the ball rolling on this. Jupiter and Earth bear almost no resemblance to each other and yet they both are planets. In reality they should probably be different categories of entities. We used to consider Ceres a planet a long time ago and then we didn't once we learned more. Definitions change as we get more/better information. If he has a better taxonomy then how about proposing it rather than bitching about the IAU?
"A river is a river, independent of whether there are other rivers nearby. In science, we call things what they are based on their attributes, not what they're next to."
Evidently the guy isn't terribly well informed. Let's go to biology. We label species all the time based on location and proximity to other similar animals rather than the much simpler "can they mate" question. Or geography. We label mountains and bodies of water precisely based on what they are next to. You could reasonably consider the Mediterranean Sea as a part of the Atlantic Ocean if you really wanted to. They are contiguous after all. We don't because we consider phenomena like currents to be important as part of the definition. Proximity and location very much can matter in taxonomy.
Further, Stern said, the criterion sets different standards for planethood at different distances from the sun. That's because the farther away a planet is from the sun, the bigger it needs to be to clear its zone. If Earth circled the sun in Pluto's orbit, for example, it wouldn't qualify for planethood in the IAU's eyes.
Umm, ok. Presuming that is true, so what? It's a definition. It would be equally true to say that Earth wouldn't be a planet if it wasn't orbiting the Sun but equally irrelevant as well because it manifestly does. If it doesn't work for some reason come up with a better taxonomy. Honestly compared to Jupiter the Earth is basically a dust mote so I'm not really sure what he's getting at. Pluto is very much like Ceres and other big rocks so it makes sense to put them in the same sort of category. Earth is rather different so it makes sense to categorize it differently. Same with Jupiter. We categorize stars in all sorts of different types so I don't know why people get so bent out of shape over doing it for orbiting bodies of rock and gas.
Earth is moving through space along with the rest of our local group at approximately 375 miles per second. I believe that works out to approximately 0.002C so that means we are almost moving at hundredths of C already without leaving the planet's surface.
Second never is a very long time. We used to think that we would never exceed the speed of sound either. Hell, 150 years ago we weren't sure powered flight was possible. I see no reason why it is impossible in principle for us to travel considerably faster than we already have managed.
The fastest we have achieved is 0.000542% c.
With a chemical rocket. It doesn't follow that that we cannot develop technology to go faster than that. I would agree that we won't go significantly faster than already achieved speeds in the near future but in 100 or 1000 years? I would be surprised if we didn't exceed that by a lot presuming we haven't killed ourselves off by then. In actuality we probably already have propulsion system technology that could send us much faster than we have already gone. What we lack are habitats that can keep us fragile humans alive during long duration high velocity journeys far from Earth.
And if their profitability falls below what investors demand as a return, then those companies move to China or close entirely, and investors put their money elsewhere. And if you don't leave investors any place to put their money with sufficient profits, they simply stop investing altogether.
In general your argument is nonsense. What do you mean "move to China or close entirely"? Do you seriously think Apple is going to close down if they make 20% net margin instead of 25% net margin? Do you seriously think they are going to become a Chinese company? Spare me. Apple already is in China in about the biggest way possible. They aren't going to move and they certainly aren't going to ignore the EU market. At most a company might relocate some production but production isn't sales and taxes occur where the sales do (or should anyway). Companies aren't going to close their doors because they make a 6% profit instead of a 10% profit. It just doesn't work that way. They might change beneficial owners but the company won't disappear. Your argument makes zero sense.
This would be an interesting ruling though as ANY tax breaks would become illegal in the EU and thus there would be no viable way for companies to keep their business in the richer EU countries.
Umm, what? If they are paying taxes it's because they are profitable. Tax avoidance like Apple is doing is the difference between profits and more profits. You don't get taxed when you are losing money. Companies that are profitable now in "richer EU countries" would remain so, just to a lesser degree. Anyway the EU is a monetary union and there are rules relating to the flow of money within a monetary union. Just like the US being a part of the EU means that countries have given away some sovereignty in exchange for economic benefits. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Why do you need a union? As long as there isn't work coercion, if you don't like the pay rate, or the quality of the workplace, leave.
Unions are sometimes very good for society. Sometimes management is abusive or corrupt. Sometimes there aren't any good jobs available even if someone wants to leave. Sometimes the company is making excessive profits at the expense of workers. Sometimes unions can correct power imbalances. It's very trite to say "if you don't like the situation leave" but that's not realistic for many people. Many people cannot easily leave their job even if they want to. Unions can be very effective at correcting management abuses and protecting those who are likely to be taken advantage of. Many of the features of the modern working life exist thanks to unions including 40 hour work weeks, paid time off, worker safety laws, engineering standards, and much more.
Are unions always a good thing? Absolutely not. Sometimes unions forget about the health of the company and make excessive demands. Sometimes unions make the companies economically uncompetitive. Sometimes unions protect dead weight or problem workers who really shouldn't be protected. Sometimes unions engage in corrupt behavior.
Unions become a problem when they forget their purpose and get too greedy. Management gets unions when they forget about caring for their employees and get too greedy.
Apple should be negotiating the best rates it's from its suppliers. In fact, being publicly traded, it would be unethical not to.
Woah... hold on there. Just because a company can legally do something does not make it automatically ethical. Maximizing profit is routinely at odds with ethical and responsible behavior. The fact that Apple management has a fiduciary duty does NOT mean they have no other legal or ethical obligations. Fiduciary duty is merely one among many legal and ethical obligations of a company. In fact getting the best piece rate from a supplier often is actually counterproductive. Squeezing a supply chain for every penny actually results in unhealthy suppliers and is bad for the Apple in the long run.
A nice idea but then you end up with a bunch of people in office that don't even know where the restroom is much less how to get anything done. If someone is doing a good job I'm fine with them serving more than one term. However I don't think they need to serve more than 4 terms in the House, 2 terms as president or two terms as Senator. Churn just for the sake of churn is pointless. But I don't think we need people serving in congress for multiple decades either.
But, we can start by removing party affiliation from the ballot.
Will never ever happen. Waste of time to even ponder. HOWEVER it would be possible to eliminate gerrymandering which would have a similarly positive effect on turnover and in keeping extremists out of office.
Just give NASA the money, and let them decide who is best to deliver.
As much as I like and respect the folks at NASA, I wouldn't hand ANY government agency a blank check or leave them to do whatever they want with the money. Money corrupts and the good folks at NASA aren't immune. I trust NASA more than most but not that much. That said you do have a valid point that Congress is getting in the way too much. How to solve this I'm not sure. I do think increasing NASA funding and keeping them focused on science, exploration and advanced technology research would be hugely worthwhile.
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen".
That's quite a different breed of moron from the ones who say "it should not happen". Think stuff like stem cell research, teaching evolution, etc.
There also is a difference between saying something wont happen soon or won't happen in a particular way versus saying it won't happen at all. For example renewable energy very clearly won't replace most fossil fuels for the next several decades at least. That's a very different statement from saying it "cannot" replace fossil fuels and different still from saying it "shouldn't" replace fossil fuels for many applications. I think that renewables will replace much of our fossil fuel use eventually. I just don't think it will happen as fast as we might hope it would. I'm skeptical about the rate of adoption, not whether it will or won't happen.
I am routinely skeptical about overly optimistic predictions, unrealistic economic expectations, incomplete analysis, etc. That doesn't mean I'm skeptical scientific and engineering progress in general. It just means that I think the person has some of the specifics wrong on a particular topic.
Professional photographers change their settings regularly. So do advanced hobbyists.
There are hundreds of settings on an SLR camera that even a pro photographer isn't going to touch routinely if ever. And there are settings they do use with some regularity that are hard to get at and/or difficult to customize. The fact that they've learned to use a crap interface with the greatest possible efficiency doesn't change the fact that it's still crap.
Nobody else needs a DSLR, so this is a complete non-problem.
How does this excuse having a terrible interface? Even if only pros used it a better interface benefits them most of all. Furthermore what you think non-pros "need" is irrelevant and arrogant. A well designed interface will work well for pros and hobbyists alike.
Because I need to be able to change the setting quickly, and also while holding the camera with both hands.
So make the settings that need to be changed fast easy to change fast. They've done some of this but they refuse to finish the job. Sometimes you do need to change things quickly, that is true. That doesn't describe a very substantial proportion of the menu options. Probably >80% rarely if ever get touched even by the pros.
I might need to change the setting faster than I can get my phone out of my pocket.
There are a lot of features you could not possibly change faster than the time it takes to pull out a cell phone that given that they are buried in a menu somewhere. I'm not suggesting everything be offloaded but I think it's pretty safe to take something like the filename formatting out of the camera menu. You're not going to change that in a hurry. And frankly the argument that every feature of a camera needs to be in a menu just doesn't match reality. NOBODY needs every possible feature of the camera on the little screen. NOBODY is going to change a lot of those settings "quickly while holding the camera with both hands". Some they will. Most they will not.
The menus on Canon cameras are actually one of the best features and one I tout when people ask me for camera suggestions. Every Canon digital camera I've owned since the late 90's, whether various models of point and shoot, or five different dSLR models (including the 5Dmk3) has a menu system consistent with the other models.
Consistently bad interfaces are still bad interfaces. I own a Canon camera (among others) and the interface is not meaningfully better than the one on my Sony or my Nikon. They all have some strengths and lots of weaknesses. The fact that they are consistent across their platform is what I consider a basic requirement. It's kind of like getting excited because all of Apple's products share a consistent interface? They'd be idiots if they didn't do that. But that's not my point. My point is that their interface is just bad. It's awkward, inefficient, unintuitive, and ugly. I could live with ugly if it was efficient but it isn't. Consistency is nice but there is a lot more ground to cover to make the interface good.
The camera manufacturer will typically give at least two shits about what professional and semi-pro photographers think.
If anything they care a little too much. They're afraid to try anything wildly new. That's the problem. It's like the old Henry Ford line "if I asked my customers what they wanted they would say 'a faster horse'". Companies need to listen to their customers but even more so they need to figure out what customers actually need rather than what they say they need. Most people are actually rather bad at designing work flows that are different than what they are accustomed to. Sometimes that is fine but to really progress it is necessary to take some risks and try some new things that might or might not work.
What kind of menu do you want? There is a lot of information and settings that have to be presented to the use
There really isn't. Not on the camera itself anyway. 95% of the menu setting never get touched or get set once and never touched again so why do they need to be in a crappy interface at all? One could remove most of the menus on any given camera and nobody would even notice because they never get used. Those "features" exist on the camera because it provides a checklist for marketing purposes, not because it makes a better product.
Canon does a pretty good job at it on such a small screen, IMO.
Why do many of them need to be on the small screen in the first place? You are going to interface the camera with a computer at some point so why not offload the menus for the rarely/never used settings to a PC or tablet? For the interface itself take some design cues from touch interfaces like on smartphones for crying out loud. They don't give it a moment's thought. Make it seamlessly work with PCs and tablets with zero headaches. Right now it doesn't. I just bought a camera a few months ago and the software to talk with my smartphone sucks and getting it to work with my PC was needlessly painful and still doesn't work great. I disagree that Canon or anyone else does a "pretty good job" of it on the camera screen and even the bits they do well could be better. I think they put in the minimum amount of effort and the results show it.
Then set up the MyMenu section and add what you want.
How about the designers of the camera doing a decent interface to begin with instead. You are suggesting a workaround to a stupid system. I prefer that the system not be stupid in the first place.
My question is, will this finally drive some of the MK II prices down?
Unlikely but a good interface probably would capture some amount of market share for the first company to get it right. Since camera buyers tend to be sticky to a particular platform it seems like it would be a worthwhile way to grab market share
The menus are fine. If you know what you're doing you won't be using them much anyway.
The menus are NOT fine. They are terrible. If they aren't any use then they should be removed. If they are of use then they should be efficient and functional and easy to understand. Now I understand that many people need different features, which is fine but that doesn't excuse having a shitty interface for them. If it is used incredibly rarely then offload it to a tablet or a PC or (heaven forbid) a phone. Let people load the menus they actually need and want on to the phone and put an interface on the camera that doesn't suck.
Just because you have trained yourself to utilize a bad interface doesn't magically turn it into a good interface. You're just making the best of a bad design.
If you're using the menu too much you're doing it wrong.
Wrong. If the menu isn't useful then it was designed wrong. A feature that isn't efficient is a bad feature.
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Look, I understand that we don't want coal factories building next to residences.
Same basic principle just with a different cause and effect. Too much of any single type of business can actually be bad for a city in the long run. The canonical example is a city like Flint Michigan. Flint had a lot of automotive assembly business and the city came to depend on it. Then at some point business conditions caused the companies for various reasons to relocate and the city has fallen on hard times ever since. It might be hard to imagine but it does happen. Plus it can make it really hard to get vital services that aren't provided by highly paid engineers. If the rent is $3000/month how exactly is a janitor getting paid $30,000/year expected to live in that city? It's easy to forget that just because a job doesn't pay well doesn't mean it isn't still vital.
I have no well informed opinion about Palo Alto in particular. I've never been there and know little about the city or its problems. But it is reasonable for a city planner to worry about having too much of the economy and city planning dependent on a single company or single industry.
But where does a city get off telling a person they can't run a business (e.g. sole proprietorship) out of their home?
When that sole proprietorship causes problems. For example if I ran a business out of my house and started using my garage as a shipping dock and having contractors show up daily and basically making the area no longer resemble a residence, my neighbors would be well within their rights to complain and the city likely would take action. If I'm a coder who never leaves the house and basically is quiet as a church mouse then it's unlikely the municipality would care.
Detroit used to have factories downtown.
If by "downtown" you mean within the city limits then that was true a loooong time ago. But Downtown Detroit hasn't had factories of any meaningful scale for ages. The actual factories tended to be in other nearby places like Hamtramack, Highland Park, River Rouge, and other areas. Detroit's downtown has been greatly revitalized in the last 15 years in spite of what many of you who haven't actually visited may have heard but very little manufacturing actually occurs in Detroit proper. Instead most of it happens in the greater Detroit metro area which has a far larger population than the city itself.
But they are hurting real science. Look at this fucking EmDrive nonsense for example. It is complete crap, but is a distraction.
In all likelihood you are correct about that. Extraordinary claims needing extraordinary proof and all that. It sounds like another cold fusion fiasco to me. But part of science is testing even the seemingly absurd claims. Once in a while something seemingly ridiculous actually works and we learn something new. That doesn't mean we should believe unsubstantiated claims but science does require one's mind to be both open and skeptical at the same time.
Optimism is one thing, but you need to be real: humans will never travel to another star. NEVER. It is too far. Space is big, and time is even bigger.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Yes even the closest star is absurdly far away. The nearest star is about 25.3 trillion miles away (4.3 light years). The technology it would require to get even a probe there much less a human is manifestly beyond our current capabilities. But it doesn't follow that because something is difficult that it is also impossible. I seriously doubt we will even get a human to Mars during my lifetime. But I don't think it is impossible - just very hard. I doubt we will travel to another star system within the next 1000 years. But is it possible? I have no evidence that it cannot be done and neither do you.
You claim to care about science but your aren't using the scientific method. If you want to claim scientifically that we cannot ever get to Promixa Centauri you need to have actual evidence to back that assertion up. Show us how we cannot get enough energy or how there are irreducible problems with keeping humans alive during such a journey or some other problem we have no way to get around. Saying "space is big and time is even bigger" proves nothing about the question.
With lower $/kg to your selected orbit, replacing a satellite is economically possible and building a satellite with a much shorter projected lifetime is probably optimal because the alternative is for the operator to be stuck with 20-year-old technology in orbit
The $/kg to orbit would need to fall quite a lot to make it practical to design less robust equipment. And the difference in cost between a satellite designed to last 5 years vs one designed to last 10 years or more is probably not a linear function and the engineering costs will be very large in either case. To make up an example with bogus numbers even if you cut 1/3 out of the engineering costs it still will be a big number. Even if you can cut some corners by being able to launch more frequently you still have huge cost in engineering until you can standardize the stuff you are sending to orbit to realize economies of scale.
It will happen just like it does in other industries but it's just going to take a while because the starting dollar amounts are so large and the engineering challenges are still being addressed. Plus the economic model for space is still being figured out and it's hard to standardize something if you don't know what the goal is yet.
The other assumption of spacecraft uniqueness is becoming less and less true. Most of the bigger comm satellites are built on a more or less common backplane. The radios are not one off devices.
To a meaningful degree this is true. I would expect some amount of standardization over time and there is some evidence of it happening. But we're still a long time away from spacecraft that are built from parts you can buy from a figurative Digi-Key if you get what I mean. It will (probably) happen but it's going to take a non-trivial amount of time.
Space nutters are usually tech people who are uneducated in the hard sciences
Yet you don't seem to be able to discern who they are. You accused me of being a "space nutter" and I do have a background in hard science and engineering and accounting as well. I've built parts that have actually gone into space. I'm actually largely a voice of caution for those who spout overly optimistic timelines or economic absurdities regarding space travel.
You seem obsessed with that term "space nutter" like others are with hipster and you throw it at anyone who shows the least optimism about space travel. Lighten up. Someone who thinks that someday we might actually develop the technology to go to other planets or leave our solar system is just being optimistic. Nothing wrong with that even if they don't understand the technical details. It amounts to nothing more than fanciful musing. As long as they aren't hurting anyway with their day dreaming what do you care?
Yeah, space travel is an incredibly difficult problem and it will take a long time before we can do really useful things. This is not news.
Android has become a fucking nightmare.
I own an android tablet but frankly I find most Android devices to be more of a PITA than I prefer to deal with. Most of them come with crapware or annoying custom versions that usually don't improve things. I'm not an Apple fanboi but at least for a phone usually I find iOS less headache inducing. When I upgrade my phone all my stuff migrates with minimal to zero problems. Buy an new phone, sign in and all my stuff downloads just like I expect it to. It does most of what I want without getting in my way. Not perfect but fine. The android phones I've used have been an irritation to put it mildly. Plus each vendor does it differently which has no benefit to me. Getting my stuff from one phone to another is a crapshoot, especially if I change vendors. There are some things I like from certain vendors but it's hard to trust that it will remain consistent over time. Plus Android devices too often never get updates which again is of no benefit to me.
I respect that some people want some features Apple doesn't offer (replaceable batteries, SD storage, etc) or that they don't like the interface or the company. No product is perfect for everyone. But personally I want a nice but relatively simple device for the one I carry around everywhere. So far Apple has fit my needs the best. I'd drop them in a heartbeat if that were to change but so far it's been fine.
Then again, part of the reason that you spent 100m$ on building the cargo, is that the launch was been so darn expensive.
The reason that you spent that much money building the cargo has comparatively little to do with the cost of the launch and everything to do with the fact that you really don't get multiple chances to get it right plus the fact that the destination has pretty much the harshest environmental conditions imaginable. Satellites and probes are expensive because they are (usually) one off bespoke products designed from scratch. If Ford could only sell a single Ford Taurus but it needed to be build to the same standards as the production model you can buy from a dealer you better believe it would cost many millions of dollars.
You could propably build a supercheap satelite with the exact same functionallity for a fraction of the cost using standard parts.
I run a company that makes custom wire harnesses for all sorts of applications. We've had some of our products go into space. The notion that you could build a "supercheap satelite" using "standard parts" is more or less nonsense at present. Maybe in the distant future that will be true but for all but a handful of corner cases it isn't true today and won't be for some time to come. It is possible to design a set of standardized space rated components but we're a long way away from that happy state of affairs for most applications.
First off "standard parts" (stuff you can order from a catalog) are generally not designed with space travel in mind. I buy components daily from distributors and they are designed for particular environmental conditions. You exceed these conditions at your own peril. Space travel is WELL outside of the performance specifications envelope for most off the shelf components. Even for the comparatively few off the shelf parts you can buy that will work, the components are not what really makes it expensive.
Second, even if you can find some components that would work in space you most likely are still building a custom product. I can assure you that a single version of anything custom that has to be right the first time is not going to be cheap. If you want your product to work for any meaningful length of time there are going to be very detailed assembly instructions, designs, reviews, audits, checks, test procedures and calibrations. You have to make sure the whole thing works together even if the components individually would be fine in space. You will spend enormous amounts of engineering time to do even the seemingly simplest things because you only get one chance to get them right. All of this is very expensive. You can try to do in on the cheap and hope you get lucky but in my experience customers who buy components for space travel aren't real fans of trusting to luck.
Third, to reduce costs of engineering you need to be able to design products that can be sold multiple times. Then you can spread the engineering costs across them. I expect that will happen eventually but right now most products intended for space are one off designs so there are no economies of scale to be enjoyed. There will have to be considerable standardization of products before that happens and we're a long way from that right now. Kind of like in the early days of aviation we're still figuring out what works because you don't want to build a lot of something that doesn't work.
Just saying that if the launch prices go down far enough we will see a whole another market of cheap hardware, where the reason for building really expensive satelites or other cargo partly vanishes.
They would have to go down a LOT further for that to be the case. I'm talking almost unrealistically cheaper. Science fiction levels of cheaper. Nothing that is likely to happen in my lifetime cheaper. It isn't the hardware that is the primary cost center in many cases. It's the design and engineering and assembly and test
You might enjoy reading Kim Stanley Robinson's last novel Aurora which muses that life might be a planetary phenomenon
Umm, you are aware that that is science FICTION right? Just because someone wrote an interesting story doesn't make it reality.
KSR was spurred to write Aurora in part by the critical backlash against his idealistic vision of terraforming in his famous Mars trilogy of two decades ago
"Critical backlash"? I read that (very boring) series and there were some interesting ideas in it but it wasn't exactly a scientific treatise. Anyone who took it as one pretty much missed the big picture rather badly.
So if the Singularity never happens and human beings can never transition to machine bodies from biological ones, we're not going anywhere.
And you have a categorical proof of this assertion? If so your Nobel prize awaits.
What the IAU "got the ball rolling on" was chaos. They had a bunch of astronomers telling planetary scientists to use a definition that they disagree with.
So it's up to the planetary scientists to do something about it if they think it makes little sense. All I hear is a bunch of bitching about it but no serious counter proposals. If the IAU decision wasn't scientifically useful then it will be ignored anyway. Personally I think they have a strong point that Pluto belongs in a different category than the rest of the planets. I would argue that they didn't actually take the categorization far enough and so from that standpoint the IAU's decision is flawed. If there is a better taxonomy then propose it and if it makes sense the rest of the scientific community will get on board in due time.
How do you see this as even remotely similar? If you take a shrew from Ohio and you place it in Nepal, does it cease being a shrew and become a dwarf shrew that no longer counts as a shrew?
Actually biologists do stuff like that all the time. There are species that are considered different based almost entirely based on location. I'm not arguing that this is a good or bad approach but it does happen and it's not irrational. Location is routinely a consideration in taxonomy in many scientific disciplines.
Seriously, you're going to cast doubt on the guy who came up with the Stern-Levison parameter that's used to make that distinction?
When he says something igorant, yes I am. If he doesn't think the IAU's decision is logical I have no problem with that. But when he claims location is not a consideration in the taxonomy of any other scientific discipline he is clearly stating something that is not true. He might be an expert on planets but that doesn't make him an expert in other areas.
Pluto is absolutely not "much like" "big rocks", and the fact that you'd make this claim is a profound expression of ignorance on the topic.
You are seriously arguing that Pluto is nothing like other "dwarf planets" or other large rocky/icy objects in our solar system? Curious argument you have there. Heck you argued yourself that Earth and Pluto have a fair bit in common. Pluto is like some other rocky/icy objects and not so much like others. Put it in a category that makes sense and be done with it. If location and size are considerations in that taxonomy then so be it.
Enough with the "we used to think" the earth was flat, humans couldn't fly, etc. We don't. We know physics now. It isn't going to happen
Yes some of us do know something about physics though it sounds as if you might not be in that particular group. To my knowledge there is nothing we know about physics that prohibits us from someday traveling at a significant fraction of C. There are abundant engineering challenges and dangers to be sure but that's a different issue. I'm claiming that there is no known reason why we couldn't accomplish that feat. You are claiming it is categorically impossible. Ergo the onus is on you to disprove the null hypothesis that high velocity travel is possible.
You can always detect a space nutter because they always say "well we USED to think" and then extrapolate that all things are possible.
You can detect a cynic because they claim things are impossible without any actual evidence to back them up. Since you seem to think you are smarter than the rest of us go ahead and show why it is provably impossible for humans to ever travel at a meaningful percent of C. Your Nobel prize awaits if you can do it. Otherwise you can leave your cynicism at the door.
"I think the IAU really embarrassed themselves with this," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Stern leads NASA's New Horizons mission, which is sending a spacecraft to study Pluto up close. "They created a problem for themselves and for astronomy. It [the definition] created an unworkable algorithm for deciding what's a planet and what's not."
While far be it from me to defend the IAU, that is just nonsense. If anything we need better definitions and more categories and the IAU got the ball rolling on this. Jupiter and Earth bear almost no resemblance to each other and yet they both are planets. In reality they should probably be different categories of entities. We used to consider Ceres a planet a long time ago and then we didn't once we learned more. Definitions change as we get more/better information. If he has a better taxonomy then how about proposing it rather than bitching about the IAU?
"A river is a river, independent of whether there are other rivers nearby. In science, we call things what they are based on their attributes, not what they're next to."
Evidently the guy isn't terribly well informed. Let's go to biology. We label species all the time based on location and proximity to other similar animals rather than the much simpler "can they mate" question. Or geography. We label mountains and bodies of water precisely based on what they are next to. You could reasonably consider the Mediterranean Sea as a part of the Atlantic Ocean if you really wanted to. They are contiguous after all. We don't because we consider phenomena like currents to be important as part of the definition. Proximity and location very much can matter in taxonomy.
Further, Stern said, the criterion sets different standards for planethood at different distances from the sun. That's because the farther away a planet is from the sun, the bigger it needs to be to clear its zone. If Earth circled the sun in Pluto's orbit, for example, it wouldn't qualify for planethood in the IAU's eyes.
Umm, ok. Presuming that is true, so what? It's a definition. It would be equally true to say that Earth wouldn't be a planet if it wasn't orbiting the Sun but equally irrelevant as well because it manifestly does. If it doesn't work for some reason come up with a better taxonomy. Honestly compared to Jupiter the Earth is basically a dust mote so I'm not really sure what he's getting at. Pluto is very much like Ceres and other big rocks so it makes sense to put them in the same sort of category. Earth is rather different so it makes sense to categorize it differently. Same with Jupiter. We categorize stars in all sorts of different types so I don't know why people get so bent out of shape over doing it for orbiting bodies of rock and gas.
We will never achieve speeds of hundredths of C.
Earth is moving through space along with the rest of our local group at approximately 375 miles per second. I believe that works out to approximately 0.002C so that means we are almost moving at hundredths of C already without leaving the planet's surface.
Second never is a very long time. We used to think that we would never exceed the speed of sound either. Hell, 150 years ago we weren't sure powered flight was possible. I see no reason why it is impossible in principle for us to travel considerably faster than we already have managed.
The fastest we have achieved is 0.000542% c.
With a chemical rocket. It doesn't follow that that we cannot develop technology to go faster than that. I would agree that we won't go significantly faster than already achieved speeds in the near future but in 100 or 1000 years? I would be surprised if we didn't exceed that by a lot presuming we haven't killed ourselves off by then. In actuality we probably already have propulsion system technology that could send us much faster than we have already gone. What we lack are habitats that can keep us fragile humans alive during long duration high velocity journeys far from Earth.
And if their profitability falls below what investors demand as a return, then those companies move to China or close entirely, and investors put their money elsewhere. And if you don't leave investors any place to put their money with sufficient profits, they simply stop investing altogether.
In general your argument is nonsense. What do you mean "move to China or close entirely"? Do you seriously think Apple is going to close down if they make 20% net margin instead of 25% net margin? Do you seriously think they are going to become a Chinese company? Spare me. Apple already is in China in about the biggest way possible. They aren't going to move and they certainly aren't going to ignore the EU market. At most a company might relocate some production but production isn't sales and taxes occur where the sales do (or should anyway). Companies aren't going to close their doors because they make a 6% profit instead of a 10% profit. It just doesn't work that way. They might change beneficial owners but the company won't disappear. Your argument makes zero sense.
This would be an interesting ruling though as ANY tax breaks would become illegal in the EU and thus there would be no viable way for companies to keep their business in the richer EU countries.
Umm, what? If they are paying taxes it's because they are profitable. Tax avoidance like Apple is doing is the difference between profits and more profits. You don't get taxed when you are losing money. Companies that are profitable now in "richer EU countries" would remain so, just to a lesser degree. Anyway the EU is a monetary union and there are rules relating to the flow of money within a monetary union. Just like the US being a part of the EU means that countries have given away some sovereignty in exchange for economic benefits. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Why do you need a union? As long as there isn't work coercion, if you don't like the pay rate, or the quality of the workplace, leave.
Unions are sometimes very good for society. Sometimes management is abusive or corrupt. Sometimes there aren't any good jobs available even if someone wants to leave. Sometimes the company is making excessive profits at the expense of workers. Sometimes unions can correct power imbalances. It's very trite to say "if you don't like the situation leave" but that's not realistic for many people. Many people cannot easily leave their job even if they want to. Unions can be very effective at correcting management abuses and protecting those who are likely to be taken advantage of. Many of the features of the modern working life exist thanks to unions including 40 hour work weeks, paid time off, worker safety laws, engineering standards, and much more.
Are unions always a good thing? Absolutely not. Sometimes unions forget about the health of the company and make excessive demands. Sometimes unions make the companies economically uncompetitive. Sometimes unions protect dead weight or problem workers who really shouldn't be protected. Sometimes unions engage in corrupt behavior.
Unions become a problem when they forget their purpose and get too greedy. Management gets unions when they forget about caring for their employees and get too greedy.
Apple should be negotiating the best rates it's from its suppliers. In fact, being publicly traded, it would be unethical not to.
Woah... hold on there. Just because a company can legally do something does not make it automatically ethical. Maximizing profit is routinely at odds with ethical and responsible behavior. The fact that Apple management has a fiduciary duty does NOT mean they have no other legal or ethical obligations. Fiduciary duty is merely one among many legal and ethical obligations of a company. In fact getting the best piece rate from a supplier often is actually counterproductive. Squeezing a supply chain for every penny actually results in unhealthy suppliers and is bad for the Apple in the long run.
Limit them to a single term in a specific office.
A nice idea but then you end up with a bunch of people in office that don't even know where the restroom is much less how to get anything done. If someone is doing a good job I'm fine with them serving more than one term. However I don't think they need to serve more than 4 terms in the House, 2 terms as president or two terms as Senator. Churn just for the sake of churn is pointless. But I don't think we need people serving in congress for multiple decades either.
But, we can start by removing party affiliation from the ballot.
Will never ever happen. Waste of time to even ponder. HOWEVER it would be possible to eliminate gerrymandering which would have a similarly positive effect on turnover and in keeping extremists out of office.
Just give NASA the money, and let them decide who is best to deliver.
As much as I like and respect the folks at NASA, I wouldn't hand ANY government agency a blank check or leave them to do whatever they want with the money. Money corrupts and the good folks at NASA aren't immune. I trust NASA more than most but not that much. That said you do have a valid point that Congress is getting in the way too much. How to solve this I'm not sure. I do think increasing NASA funding and keeping them focused on science, exploration and advanced technology research would be hugely worthwhile.
I like it because it reminds me that technical and scientific progress cannot be stopped by morons just saying "it'll never happen".
That's quite a different breed of moron from the ones who say "it should not happen". Think stuff like stem cell research, teaching evolution, etc.
There also is a difference between saying something wont happen soon or won't happen in a particular way versus saying it won't happen at all. For example renewable energy very clearly won't replace most fossil fuels for the next several decades at least. That's a very different statement from saying it "cannot" replace fossil fuels and different still from saying it "shouldn't" replace fossil fuels for many applications. I think that renewables will replace much of our fossil fuel use eventually. I just don't think it will happen as fast as we might hope it would. I'm skeptical about the rate of adoption, not whether it will or won't happen.
I am routinely skeptical about overly optimistic predictions, unrealistic economic expectations, incomplete analysis, etc. That doesn't mean I'm skeptical scientific and engineering progress in general. It just means that I think the person has some of the specifics wrong on a particular topic.
Professional photographers change their settings regularly. So do advanced hobbyists.
There are hundreds of settings on an SLR camera that even a pro photographer isn't going to touch routinely if ever. And there are settings they do use with some regularity that are hard to get at and/or difficult to customize. The fact that they've learned to use a crap interface with the greatest possible efficiency doesn't change the fact that it's still crap.
Nobody else needs a DSLR, so this is a complete non-problem.
How does this excuse having a terrible interface? Even if only pros used it a better interface benefits them most of all. Furthermore what you think non-pros "need" is irrelevant and arrogant. A well designed interface will work well for pros and hobbyists alike.
Because I need to be able to change the setting quickly, and also while holding the camera with both hands.
So make the settings that need to be changed fast easy to change fast. They've done some of this but they refuse to finish the job. Sometimes you do need to change things quickly, that is true. That doesn't describe a very substantial proportion of the menu options. Probably >80% rarely if ever get touched even by the pros.
I might need to change the setting faster than I can get my phone out of my pocket.
There are a lot of features you could not possibly change faster than the time it takes to pull out a cell phone that given that they are buried in a menu somewhere. I'm not suggesting everything be offloaded but I think it's pretty safe to take something like the filename formatting out of the camera menu. You're not going to change that in a hurry. And frankly the argument that every feature of a camera needs to be in a menu just doesn't match reality. NOBODY needs every possible feature of the camera on the little screen. NOBODY is going to change a lot of those settings "quickly while holding the camera with both hands". Some they will. Most they will not.
The menus on Canon cameras are actually one of the best features and one I tout when people ask me for camera suggestions. Every Canon digital camera I've owned since the late 90's, whether various models of point and shoot, or five different dSLR models (including the 5Dmk3) has a menu system consistent with the other models.
Consistently bad interfaces are still bad interfaces. I own a Canon camera (among others) and the interface is not meaningfully better than the one on my Sony or my Nikon. They all have some strengths and lots of weaknesses. The fact that they are consistent across their platform is what I consider a basic requirement. It's kind of like getting excited because all of Apple's products share a consistent interface? They'd be idiots if they didn't do that. But that's not my point. My point is that their interface is just bad. It's awkward, inefficient, unintuitive, and ugly. I could live with ugly if it was efficient but it isn't. Consistency is nice but there is a lot more ground to cover to make the interface good.
The camera manufacturer will typically give at least two shits about what professional and semi-pro photographers think.
If anything they care a little too much. They're afraid to try anything wildly new. That's the problem. It's like the old Henry Ford line "if I asked my customers what they wanted they would say 'a faster horse'". Companies need to listen to their customers but even more so they need to figure out what customers actually need rather than what they say they need. Most people are actually rather bad at designing work flows that are different than what they are accustomed to. Sometimes that is fine but to really progress it is necessary to take some risks and try some new things that might or might not work.
What kind of menu do you want? There is a lot of information and settings that have to be presented to the use
There really isn't. Not on the camera itself anyway. 95% of the menu setting never get touched or get set once and never touched again so why do they need to be in a crappy interface at all? One could remove most of the menus on any given camera and nobody would even notice because they never get used. Those "features" exist on the camera because it provides a checklist for marketing purposes, not because it makes a better product.
Canon does a pretty good job at it on such a small screen, IMO.
Why do many of them need to be on the small screen in the first place? You are going to interface the camera with a computer at some point so why not offload the menus for the rarely/never used settings to a PC or tablet? For the interface itself take some design cues from touch interfaces like on smartphones for crying out loud. They don't give it a moment's thought. Make it seamlessly work with PCs and tablets with zero headaches. Right now it doesn't. I just bought a camera a few months ago and the software to talk with my smartphone sucks and getting it to work with my PC was needlessly painful and still doesn't work great. I disagree that Canon or anyone else does a "pretty good job" of it on the camera screen and even the bits they do well could be better. I think they put in the minimum amount of effort and the results show it.
Then set up the MyMenu section and add what you want.
How about the designers of the camera doing a decent interface to begin with instead. You are suggesting a workaround to a stupid system. I prefer that the system not be stupid in the first place.
My question is, will this finally drive some of the MK II prices down?
Unlikely but a good interface probably would capture some amount of market share for the first company to get it right. Since camera buyers tend to be sticky to a particular platform it seems like it would be a worthwhile way to grab market share
The menus are fine. If you know what you're doing you won't be using them much anyway.
The menus are NOT fine. They are terrible. If they aren't any use then they should be removed. If they are of use then they should be efficient and functional and easy to understand. Now I understand that many people need different features, which is fine but that doesn't excuse having a shitty interface for them. If it is used incredibly rarely then offload it to a tablet or a PC or (heaven forbid) a phone. Let people load the menus they actually need and want on to the phone and put an interface on the camera that doesn't suck.
Just because you have trained yourself to utilize a bad interface doesn't magically turn it into a good interface. You're just making the best of a bad design.
If you're using the menu too much you're doing it wrong.
Wrong. If the menu isn't useful then it was designed wrong. A feature that isn't efficient is a bad feature.