Re:Titanium is also very flexible.
on
The Sexiest Metal
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· Score: 1
It all depends on how you engineer the Titanium parts, just like any other metal. You wouldn't crush a can of Coke and then wonder about the validity of building aircraft parts out of aluminum after all.
Not only is the Ti that Apple uses of a fairly low grade, but they use Ti as covers really, not structural parts. The frame of the TiBook is actually injection moulded plastic with lots of carbon fiber strands to give it a fair amount of strength (not the sexy race car/space shuttle carbon fiber matrix work that has the cool woven look about it, but CF none the less). Had Apple milled the frame from a billet of Titanium, you could put the end of a TiBook in a vice and stand on it if you wanted.
Unfortunatly, the marketing folks who have latched onto Ti have drivening the engineering teams to cheep down the use of the material to a point where stamped Ti covers and that junky 'Metaloid' stuff (plastic with a high content of metal dust so it looks and feels like metal to the touch, but is as easy to manufacturer and has the strength of injection moulded plastic).
At my old company, we made machined aluminum enclosures for PDAs (shameless plug; Dave Design) and we experimented with milling a few Ti enclosures. They would take 16 hours on the machine (compared to 3) and go through tools 20x faster then Al, but they would have been very cool. Anyone want a CNC machined Titanium Handspring Visor?
I might not know what I am talking about here, but isn't the idea of putting a bunch of wireless sensors on individual infantry soldiers sort of a bad idea?
What is the possibility of a hostile force getting the very basic technology needed to pick up those transmissions and use them to locate said 'wireless enabled' soldier. Sure, the data itself would be encrypted, but with the location and movement vectors of a soldier who is using the system, you have all the information you need to make fairly dramatic changes in that soldier's biometric monitoring.
I have no real problems with the whole idea of the fashion industry et all; cloathing a complex form like the human body is a rather complex affair when you need to make fat, rich women think they look 'Sexy.' As far as I am concerned, the Armanis, Muglers and Diors of the world probably don't get paid enough.
An iPod case, on the other hand, isn't really a project that requires a designer however. A guy/gal who knows how to sew leather around a box with a hole in the front and a flap that flips over, yes... a designer? No.
Skippy the Air Marshall is on about his 300th flight with absolutly no incident when a passenger, who has clearly been drinking, begins to get beliggerant with a flight attendent. Skippy sees the chance to actually do his job for once, and stands up to go arrest the prick.
As he walks towards the incident scene, he identifies himself as a US Air Marshall (he probably doesn't even pull out his weapon, no need to). Once he closes in on the drunk guy, 3 others stand up, as if on que, and overpower Skippy. His pistol is taken, Skippy's head is blown off to scare the crap out of anyone and now the terrorists are fully armed. Heck, if Skippy is a cowboy, he might even carry a backup weapon, which is now also in the hands of said terrorists.
All of this happened because we decided that to quell the American people, putting an armed air marshall on EVERY flight would be a good idea (I mean, it sounds really good). In effect however, this simply contributes to the problems that allowing the 4 9/11 flighs to be overtaken in the first place: fixed security systems can always be overcome. Remember Gen Patton, "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man."
They can be probed, studied, planned for, overcome and (in this instance) actually leveraged to gain more power. Clearly the people who are willing to do these acts are smart enough to figure these things out. I am a lowley industrial designer who has helped develope some equipment for special operations forces, I can't imagine what lovely ideas the snake eaters could come up with to overcome an Air Marshall.
Do you actually feel that your vote once or twice a year has any effect at all on what our 'elected' officials do? Our implimentation of democracy (in the modern sense, not the absolute sense) simply does not offer a high enough resolution of control to effectivly allow 'the people' any real control. That's the great trick of this country, making it's citizens believe they have power when they really don't.
In short; saying citizens control this country with their vote is akin to saying the passengers on a 747 control the aircraft with the flight attendant call button.
http://www.dvgarage.com
For US$200, you get a full copy of Electric Image 2.9 (no time limits, no dumb file formats, no BS) Modeler and Animator. While that's worth the price of admission for most people, DV Garage's coolest trick are the few hours of video walkthroughs, tutorials, training and other goodies. DVG will soon be offering Electric Image Universe 3 with full OS X compatability.
While Electric Image isn't exactly Maya (though EI does have plenty of big time movie credits to it's name), the DV Garage package's training is nothing short of excellent. Maya's 'Learning' edition comes with NO training.
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It all depends on how you engineer the Titanium parts, just like any other metal. You wouldn't crush a can of Coke and then wonder about the validity of building aircraft parts out of aluminum after all.
Not only is the Ti that Apple uses of a fairly low grade, but they use Ti as covers really, not structural parts. The frame of the TiBook is actually injection moulded plastic with lots of carbon fiber strands to give it a fair amount of strength (not the sexy race car/space shuttle carbon fiber matrix work that has the cool woven look about it, but CF none the less). Had Apple milled the frame from a billet of Titanium, you could put the end of a TiBook in a vice and stand on it if you wanted.
Unfortunatly, the marketing folks who have latched onto Ti have drivening the engineering teams to cheep down the use of the material to a point where stamped Ti covers and that junky 'Metaloid' stuff (plastic with a high content of metal dust so it looks and feels like metal to the touch, but is as easy to manufacturer and has the strength of injection moulded plastic).
At my old company, we made machined aluminum enclosures for PDAs (shameless plug; Dave Design) and we experimented with milling a few Ti enclosures. They would take 16 hours on the machine (compared to 3) and go through tools 20x faster then Al, but they would have been very cool. Anyone want a CNC machined Titanium Handspring Visor?
I might not know what I am talking about here, but isn't the idea of putting a bunch of wireless sensors on individual infantry soldiers sort of a bad idea?
What is the possibility of a hostile force getting the very basic technology needed to pick up those transmissions and use them to locate said 'wireless enabled' soldier. Sure, the data itself would be encrypted, but with the location and movement vectors of a soldier who is using the system, you have all the information you need to make fairly dramatic changes in that soldier's biometric monitoring.
I have no real problems with the whole idea of the fashion industry et all; cloathing a complex form like the human body is a rather complex affair when you need to make fat, rich women think they look 'Sexy.' As far as I am concerned, the Armanis, Muglers and Diors of the world probably don't get paid enough.
An iPod case, on the other hand, isn't really a project that requires a designer however. A guy/gal who knows how to sew leather around a box with a hole in the front and a flap that flips over, yes... a designer? No.
Actually, there has already been at least one, ahem, incident...
National Guardsman Shoots Self in Butt
Sorry it comes from such a weird news source, but it really did happen, it was all over the local news.
Skippy the Air Marshall is on about his 300th flight with absolutly no incident when a passenger, who has clearly been drinking, begins to get beliggerant with a flight attendent. Skippy sees the chance to actually do his job for once, and stands up to go arrest the prick.
As he walks towards the incident scene, he identifies himself as a US Air Marshall (he probably doesn't even pull out his weapon, no need to). Once he closes in on the drunk guy, 3 others stand up, as if on que, and overpower Skippy. His pistol is taken, Skippy's head is blown off to scare the crap out of anyone and now the terrorists are fully armed. Heck, if Skippy is a cowboy, he might even carry a backup weapon, which is now also in the hands of said terrorists.
All of this happened because we decided that to quell the American people, putting an armed air marshall on EVERY flight would be a good idea (I mean, it sounds really good). In effect however, this simply contributes to the problems that allowing the 4 9/11 flighs to be overtaken in the first place: fixed security systems can always be overcome. Remember Gen Patton, "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man."
They can be probed, studied, planned for, overcome and (in this instance) actually leveraged to gain more power. Clearly the people who are willing to do these acts are smart enough to figure these things out. I am a lowley industrial designer who has helped develope some equipment for special operations forces, I can't imagine what lovely ideas the snake eaters could come up with to overcome an Air Marshall.
Do you actually feel that your vote once or twice a year has any effect at all on what our 'elected' officials do? Our implimentation of democracy (in the modern sense, not the absolute sense) simply does not offer a high enough resolution of control to effectivly allow 'the people' any real control. That's the great trick of this country, making it's citizens believe they have power when they really don't.
In short; saying citizens control this country with their vote is akin to saying the passengers on a 747 control the aircraft with the flight attendant call button.
http://www.dvgarage.com For US$200, you get a full copy of Electric Image 2.9 (no time limits, no dumb file formats, no BS) Modeler and Animator. While that's worth the price of admission for most people, DV Garage's coolest trick are the few hours of video walkthroughs, tutorials, training and other goodies. DVG will soon be offering Electric Image Universe 3 with full OS X compatability. While Electric Image isn't exactly Maya (though EI does have plenty of big time movie credits to it's name), the DV Garage package's training is nothing short of excellent. Maya's 'Learning' edition comes with NO training.
Yea,
Don't have a front splash page, and if you absolutly need one, don't forget a big button that says 'Click To Enter.'
Oops, looks like www.webpagesthatsuck.com forgot about that little rule...