It would be cool. If only the robots needed to do that were anything more than science fiction. Not that an exploratory mission needs that much in the way of infrastructure in the first place.
No, they aren't afraid of somebody getting hurt [directly] by a Nerf gun. They're concerned about the consequences when somebody sees a bunch of people running around carrying weapons - and calls 911. Or decides to tackle the 'weapon wielder'. Or raises a vigilante posse to go after the 'weapon wielder'. Etc... Etc...
WoW does mandate it. The 25 man content in TBC was balanced around having 25 people turn up wearing the best available equipment, using every flask/potion/food buff/weapon buff available to them
Going to TBC is a personal decision - not something mandated by WoW or Blizzard.
Except that here on earth, we don't design such things by intuition. We design them by calculating the centre of gravity, tipping forces, etc... etc... The equations don't change by changing the name of the planetary body the machine operates on.
Bet if you did a study, a serious one, you'd find there's an irrefutable inverse relationship between the amount of money bid for a project and the success of that project.
I can refute it without even breaking a sweat. The Manhattan Project. The Apollo Project. The creation of the Polaris, Atlas, and Titan missiles... The creation of nuclear powered ships... Etc... Etc... Big ticket projects all - unqualified successes all.
I mean, what is it with these large scale IT projects? They take a simple problem and turn it into a money pit. Here in the UK we've had several high profile massive budget IT failures in the last 10 years, air traffic control, national health patient record databases, in fact the more critical it is the more of a spectacular unqualified fuck-up it becomes.
Mostly because we really don't have all that much experience building huge monolithic IT projects from scratch and to spec. The vast majority of the [truly tremendously] big IT projects to date (the telephone system, the networks big banks use, etc...) have been built piecemeal and grown from small beginnings.
Now, if you got a couple of average hacker nerds and gave then the same specs, but didn't tell them it was for a large scale project, or for whom, they would give you a faultless solution using commodity hardware, stock methods and free software in a few months at one *millionth* the cost we're looking at here. Every one of you here knows it to be true.
I know it's a common conceit of IT workers to believe so. I don't believe for a single second that it's true. 'Average Hacker Nerds' have essentially zero experience in building large systems, triply so for distributed ones.
So, my question is, what goes wrong? How can it possibly go so wrong? Are the people involved complete idiots? Or corrupt?
Or, just maybe, the projects are Really Hard in extremely specialized project domains.
What are the factors that turn a simple software project into an impossible task?
The persistent belief that these projects are 'simply software' and thus easy to do. Especially among people with essentially zero knowledge of the problem domain(s) and the issues involved.
He also said the computers actually are easy to use, with a failure rate of less than 1 percent when tested in the field.
One percent of three hundred million is three million.
So what? They aren't buying three hundred million computers. Probably a few hundred thousand, tops.
Further, pushing reliability from 99.00 to 99.9 cost a great deal of money - probably more than just buying the extra computers to cover the estimated failure rate.
That would be a bullshit story - as the Army buys complete radios, not components. It would also be bullshit because when the Army does buy components, its buys them to MIL-SPEC, no more and no less.
I always fly wearing earplugs. Specifically Flents' Flitemate pressure-reducing earplugs. Not only do they keep my ears from building up painful pressure upon descent
This whole problem of people talking loudly on a cell phone is due to a fundamental flaw in cell phone design. In the old-style AT&T wired phones, your voice was fed back to the handset receiver, so you could hear yourself when you're talking.
Now reduce the distance to just a hundred yards... or fifty yards. "Beside" is much more fuzzy and much less black and white than the OP thinks. (And what effect does your braking have on the traffic behind you? These things ripple and local optimal solutions may lead to globally suboptimal conditions.)
Sure, you'd have time to slow down - but having what effect on traffic you are now in front of? I was merely pointing out that what is locally optimal for you may not be globally optimal, and that 'beside' is a fuzzy concept and not black and white. If the car in question is only a hundred yards in front of you, things get hairier, etc...
The thing is, assuming that you can produce reliable sensors, there's only two rules you have to follow when dealing with other cars for freeway travel, neither of which require any kind of communication with an external controller:
1) Do not drive faster than the vehicle in front of you 2) Do not change lanes if there is a vehicle beside you
Both of those are trivial to handle, even at 250MPH.
Not trivial at all. Doing 250MPH, if you have a vehicle a mile ahead of you doing 225MPH in the adjoining lane, it's not beside you or ahead of you - but change lanes and end up behind it... There's all manner of such edge cases.
The real problem isn't ramming another car, it's finding the damn lane on the road
Of course, that nobody has ever really specified that such things must be controlled tightly is proof positive that such things can never be controlled tightly.
Let's see, the OP is saying he is convinced the painting is real, he is doing his best to shut up anyone questioning his claim, and he is claiming anyone who does question his claim is irrational.
Not quite - the OP is a friend of the buyer and is defending him.
You know, if someone was trying to sell a fake they'd do these exact three things. Make a claim, try to silence opposition to the claim, and discredit his detractors.
Much more likely the friend (Robert) has a great deal of emotional investment in his collection - and his friend is merely trying to defend him. Such is life online. (Notice the typical threats of libel, veiled attacks ad hominem etc...?)
I'm not saying it is a fake, I'm just saying this guy is obviously paving the way for selling the painting, but doing it exactly like a con artist would. Don't believe me? Check out antiques auctions on eBay. The guys who are full of bologna do the exact same song and dance. Especially people selling old armour. Bury it in their backyard for a few months, dig it up, then make those kind of statements.
Oh, I could tell you tales that would curl your hair from when I ran a used and rare bookstore... You wouldn't believe the stories people will tell.
But the thing that makes me wonder is why the painting showed up on eBay. If the antique dealer is serious and knowledgeable and the piece is provably authentic... Then I'd expect it to appear at a real auction house, not on eBay.
Actually, rereading the article, I note something interesting - there is no claim the painting was ever really authenticated. Only that unnamed 'experts' dated it. (Which in reality is something impossible to do right without physically examining the artifact.)
I'm not sure it's a deliberate con - but it does smell of amateurs who haven't done the homework they aren't qualified to do in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be cool. If only the robots needed to do that were anything more than science fiction. Not that an exploratory mission needs that much in the way of infrastructure in the first place.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
No, they aren't afraid of somebody getting hurt [directly] by a Nerf gun. They're concerned about the consequences when somebody sees a bunch of people running around carrying weapons - and calls 911. Or decides to tackle the 'weapon wielder'. Or raises a vigilante posse to go after the 'weapon wielder'. Etc... Etc...
Going to TBC is a personal decision - not something mandated by WoW or Blizzard.
You'll note I did say they did buy components, but those are for repair parts not for assembling a radio from scratch.
It is BS, period. And did I not note that they did buy components? (For repair parts mostly.)
Through the earpiece not through the speaker. The effect comes from the form of the handset and varies with the specific design.
Except that MIL-SPEC is a commonly used standard, even outside of the US military. Try again.
Really. The effect in older phones came from the shape of the hollow handset.
They weren't nuclear powered - they were nuclear heated. A significant difference.
Except that here on earth, we don't design such things by intuition. We design them by calculating the centre of gravity, tipping forces, etc... etc... The equations don't change by changing the name of the planetary body the machine operates on.
Then look up "unobtanium power supply" to see the rock on which many of these schemes founder.
I can refute it without even breaking a sweat. The Manhattan Project. The Apollo Project. The creation of the Polaris, Atlas, and Titan missiles... The creation of nuclear powered ships... Etc... Etc... Big ticket projects all - unqualified successes all.
Mostly because we really don't have all that much experience building huge monolithic IT projects from scratch and to spec. The vast majority of the [truly tremendously] big IT projects to date (the telephone system, the networks big banks use, etc...) have been built piecemeal and grown from small beginnings.
I know it's a common conceit of IT workers to believe so. I don't believe for a single second that it's true. 'Average Hacker Nerds' have essentially zero experience in building large systems, triply so for distributed ones.
Or, just maybe, the projects are Really Hard in extremely specialized project domains.
The persistent belief that these projects are 'simply software' and thus easy to do. Especially among people with essentially zero knowledge of the problem domain(s) and the issues involved.
I just love it when folks present unsupported opinions as facts.
Fact is, that works out to about $2.00/person - which is actually pretty cheap.
So what? They aren't buying three hundred million computers. Probably a few hundred thousand, tops.
Further, pushing reliability from 99.00 to 99.9 cost a great deal of money - probably more than just buying the extra computers to cover the estimated failure rate.
That would be a bullshit story - as the Army buys complete radios, not components. It would also be bullshit because when the Army does buy components, its buys them to MIL-SPEC, no more and no less.
That of course breaks the laws of physics...
No, it wasn't.
It isn't. Which is my point.
Now reduce the distance to just a hundred yards... or fifty yards. "Beside" is much more fuzzy and much less black and white than the OP thinks. (And what effect does your braking have on the traffic behind you? These things ripple and local optimal solutions may lead to globally suboptimal conditions.)
Sure, you'd have time to slow down - but having what effect on traffic you are now in front of? I was merely pointing out that what is locally optimal for you may not be globally optimal, and that 'beside' is a fuzzy concept and not black and white. If the car in question is only a hundred yards in front of you, things get hairier, etc...
That depends on how educated and literate the persons you conduct everyday conversations with are.
Not trivial at all. Doing 250MPH, if you have a vehicle a mile ahead of you doing 225MPH in the adjoining lane, it's not beside you or ahead of you - but change lanes and end up behind it... There's all manner of such edge cases.
Of course, that nobody has ever really specified that such things must be controlled tightly is proof positive that such things can never be controlled tightly.
The original author, back in 1968, can be forgiven for not knowing about distributed computing networks. You might consider reading up on them.
Not quite - the OP is a friend of the buyer and is defending him.
Much more likely the friend (Robert) has a great deal of emotional investment in his collection - and his friend is merely trying to defend him. Such is life online. (Notice the typical threats of libel, veiled attacks ad hominem etc...?)
Oh, I could tell you tales that would curl your hair from when I ran a used and rare bookstore... You wouldn't believe the stories people will tell.
But the thing that makes me wonder is why the painting showed up on eBay. If the antique dealer is serious and knowledgeable and the piece is provably authentic... Then I'd expect it to appear at a real auction house, not on eBay.
Actually, rereading the article, I note something interesting - there is no claim the painting was ever really authenticated. Only that unnamed 'experts' dated it. (Which in reality is something impossible to do right without physically examining the artifact.)
I'm not sure it's a deliberate con - but it does smell of amateurs who haven't done the homework they aren't qualified to do in the first place.