But that isn't how engineering works. Don't confuse the two. Science learns fundemental things about the universe (eg. knowledge about aerodynamics, thermodynamics etc), and engineering applies those things to solve problems. But solving problems like rocket design is astonishingly complex.
Any engineering system is a tradeoff between competing design factors like weight, cost, thrust, payload. Even if you get the balance right, there are still mundane design choices - like whether to go with a one-piece boosters for reliability or to go with partly-assembled boosters for logistics reasons - that have a huge impact on the performance of your system.
Every engineering challange is unique because even if you've done the same product (eg. a ball-point pen) hundreds of times before, you're still trying to make them cheaper or make them work better so that you'll have an edge in the marketplace. If your prototype pen design fails because the plastic walls are too thin, then it breaks during testing and an office drone gets ink all over him. And it happens. For systems with billions of articles in service today. When you push boundaries of engineering performance, expect to have the occasional rocket blow up. If we were only making 'safe' products we knew how to make already because we'd made them exactly the same way before, we would never have made it past the wheel.
I think many people not from the US would be surprised at the number of things that are outside the homogenous ISO Standard American Sitcom Cultural Norm. Even growing up with American TV in Australia (an English-speaking western nation), having lived in Canada for 3.5 years and having attended an American school in Thailand for 3.5 years didn't prepare me for the plethora of tiny little differences. Everything from 'what are Daisy Dukes?' (very short shorts) to 'what is a sledge-pull' (a type of tractor truck race) to 'what is a W-4' (tax stuff) to more esoteric cultural stuff like how hierarchies in the work place function (they are much more rigid than in Oz).
Except it didn't appear to be from J. R. Stranger; it was spoofed to appear to come from a recruitment website that they had used with before. The attachment was a.XLS named "recruitment strategy 2011" or somesuch, which is a perfectly plausible thing to get from a recruiter you've worked with in the past. This was a targeted attack, not just malware spam.
Unfortunately, Lysenko was wrong and acquired attributes (like becoming a geek from programming) are not heritable characteristics. Becoming a geek won't make your children autistic; having ubergeek genes might.
This one always bothered me. For something to be 'official' there must be someone who officiates; ie. an official. So, when someone says "It's official: Apple is better than Linux!" I always wonder "from what office did the official in charge of determining what OS is the best dispatch this notice?
I think the question is more one of "What do you get for the money you've spent?" A war sends men and material overseas and generally fewer come back than you sent; you might gain some political or diplomatic advantage, and that has to be judged against the cost. Space research sends men and rockets into space and generally fewer come back than you sent; you might gain some technological or scientific knowledge, and that has to be judged against the cost.
Unless you're also drinking gasoline to maintain your metabolism, I'm not sure the comparison is really fair. Certainly, there is cheaper food out there but one could argue that its long-term costs in terms of health issues outweigh the benefits of cheaper production.
Hello, roboticist here. I'd like to ask you a question: how were power steering, cruise control, anti-lock breaks, fuel injection and collision avoidance radar tested before it was introduced to the commercial car market? When you've answered that question, I'd like to ask you how robotic cars are substantially different in terms of 'experimentation'.
Amen, brother (or sister). I don't draw the line at DRM, though; I extend that to online activation schemes as well. Why should a piece of software dial home just to function? It's like buying a car and then having to call some guy's number to have the wheel clamps removed before you can drive it home. We wouldn't put up with it for hardware, so why should we put up with it for software?
It rather depresses me that IT and engineering workplaces remain bastions of primitive tribal thought when it comes to things like gender, diversity and sexuality. It's particularly galling because I know many geeky sorts are exactly the kind of people who got picked on in their youth for failing to conform.
Maybe it's a consequence of having too many hormonal males around (doing the dominance hierarchy thing) or maybe they just feel like it's ok to pick on folks 'further down the totem pole' than they. We have no one to blame but ourselves if we let cultures in our work place develop into something akin to hostile or bullying environments. We have met the enemy, and they are us.
Then explain all the colourful mods that use that engine. Really. I'd like to know why third party developers can have colour, but the original engine developers can't.
Quake was brown because of technology limitations.
That's rubbish. In the 90s we have 16-something million colours to play with - from every part of the spectrum. There was absolutely nothing stopping them from using different colours with their engine, as exemplified by the original Team Fortress. They simply chose to go with the same decrepit sci fi-fantasy theme that has been Id's bread and butter since Doom. And yes, Doom had colour too, occasionally, but still mostly brown. The predominant use of brown was a stylistic decision entirely removed from limitations of technology.
The MS-DOS acronym It always made me wonder. If QDOS was Quick and Dirty Operating System, then surely MS-DOS is Microsoft Dirty Operating System. It's a weird way to brand your product.
I don't think it makes you a freak - I think it's part of natural human variation. And in a natural setting it's a valuable variation, too. It's extremely useful to always have one or two of the tribe awake and alert during the night in case nocturnal predators come calling. I would actually be very surprised if there wasn't a significant fraction of humanity that exhibited nighttime wakefulness.
Oops - I mismoderated and need to post to undo it. Please mod parent up for speaking sense and being helpful! Just don't click the wrong thing like meeee!
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That's pretty much how science works.
But that isn't how engineering works. Don't confuse the two. Science learns fundemental things about the universe (eg. knowledge about aerodynamics, thermodynamics etc), and engineering applies those things to solve problems. But solving problems like rocket design is astonishingly complex.
Any engineering system is a tradeoff between competing design factors like weight, cost, thrust, payload. Even if you get the balance right, there are still mundane design choices - like whether to go with a one-piece boosters for reliability or to go with partly-assembled boosters for logistics reasons - that have a huge impact on the performance of your system.
Every engineering challange is unique because even if you've done the same product (eg. a ball-point pen) hundreds of times before, you're still trying to make them cheaper or make them work better so that you'll have an edge in the marketplace. If your prototype pen design fails because the plastic walls are too thin, then it breaks during testing and an office drone gets ink all over him. And it happens. For systems with billions of articles in service today. When you push boundaries of engineering performance, expect to have the occasional rocket blow up. If we were only making 'safe' products we knew how to make already because we'd made them exactly the same way before, we would never have made it past the wheel.
I think many people not from the US would be surprised at the number of things that are outside the homogenous ISO Standard American Sitcom Cultural Norm. Even growing up with American TV in Australia (an English-speaking western nation), having lived in Canada for 3.5 years and having attended an American school in Thailand for 3.5 years didn't prepare me for the plethora of tiny little differences. Everything from 'what are Daisy Dukes?' (very short shorts) to 'what is a sledge-pull' (a type of tractor truck race) to 'what is a W-4' (tax stuff) to more esoteric cultural stuff like how hierarchies in the work place function (they are much more rigid than in Oz).
Better yet, just go right here. Orbinauts represent - hail probe!
Cue the movie trailer guy:
... fights against the power of nature.
In the eye of the Hurricane...
"... latest forecasts say that hurricane Irene is going to strike Long Island within 24 hours."
a dedicated system administrator...
"This box has 1000 days uptime. It's not going down on my watch!"
"Johnny, we're being evacuated - we have to go!"
"No! The mainframe stays; I stay!"
One man. One server. One mission.
Coming this summer... Irene.
I'd pay to see that... :)
Except it didn't appear to be from J. R. Stranger; it was spoofed to appear to come from a recruitment website that they had used with before. The attachment was a .XLS named "recruitment strategy 2011" or somesuch, which is a perfectly plausible thing to get from a recruiter you've worked with in the past. This was a targeted attack, not just malware spam.
Unfortunately, Lysenko was wrong and acquired attributes (like becoming a geek from programming) are not heritable characteristics. Becoming a geek won't make your children autistic; having ubergeek genes might.
I can't really say anything else but thank you for creating something that helps keep me sane. Slashdot is my homepage.
Except with a card skimmer, you don't - just make a replica card using the captured information and use the observed PIN combination.
So you're saying forming communities of like-minded people is... anti-social? I don't think that word means what you think it means.
This one always bothered me. For something to be 'official' there must be someone who officiates; ie. an official. So, when someone says "It's official: Apple is better than Linux!" I always wonder "from what office did the official in charge of determining what OS is the best dispatch this notice?
I think the question is more one of "What do you get for the money you've spent?"
A war sends men and material overseas and generally fewer come back than you sent; you might gain some political or diplomatic advantage, and that has to be judged against the cost. Space research sends men and rockets into space and generally fewer come back than you sent; you might gain some technological or scientific knowledge, and that has to be judged against the cost.
Unless you're also drinking gasoline to maintain your metabolism, I'm not sure the comparison is really fair. Certainly, there is cheaper food out there but one could argue that its long-term costs in terms of health issues outweigh the benefits of cheaper production.
Obvious goatse troll is obvious.
Hello, roboticist here. I'd like to ask you a question: how were power steering, cruise control, anti-lock breaks, fuel injection and collision avoidance radar tested before it was introduced to the commercial car market? When you've answered that question, I'd like to ask you how robotic cars are substantially different in terms of 'experimentation'.
Amen, brother (or sister). I don't draw the line at DRM, though; I extend that to online activation schemes as well. Why should a piece of software dial home just to function? It's like buying a car and then having to call some guy's number to have the wheel clamps removed before you can drive it home. We wouldn't put up with it for hardware, so why should we put up with it for software?
It rather depresses me that IT and engineering workplaces remain bastions of primitive tribal thought when it comes to things like gender, diversity and sexuality. It's particularly galling because I know many geeky sorts are exactly the kind of people who got picked on in their youth for failing to conform.
Maybe it's a consequence of having too many hormonal males around (doing the dominance hierarchy thing) or maybe they just feel like it's ok to pick on folks 'further down the totem pole' than they. We have no one to blame but ourselves if we let cultures in our work place develop into something akin to hostile or bullying environments. We have met the enemy, and they are us.
Then explain all the colourful mods that use that engine. Really. I'd like to know why third party developers can have colour, but the original engine developers can't.
Quake was brown because of technology limitations.
That's rubbish. In the 90s we have 16-something million colours to play with - from every part of the spectrum. There was absolutely nothing stopping them from using different colours with their engine, as exemplified by the original Team Fortress. They simply chose to go with the same decrepit sci fi-fantasy theme that has been Id's bread and butter since Doom. And yes, Doom had colour too, occasionally, but still mostly brown. The predominant use of brown was a stylistic decision entirely removed from limitations of technology.
My dog is my wife, you insensitive clod!
The MS-DOS acronym It always made me wonder. If QDOS was Quick and Dirty Operating System, then surely MS-DOS is Microsoft Dirty Operating System. It's a weird way to brand your product.
The irony is that for many of us the thing we most need protecting from is the USA...
Where do you think 'dopey' got his name? Doc insists he needs it for the pain...
I don't think it makes you a freak - I think it's part of natural human variation. And in a natural setting it's a valuable variation, too. It's extremely useful to always have one or two of the tribe awake and alert during the night in case nocturnal predators come calling. I would actually be very surprised if there wasn't a significant fraction of humanity that exhibited nighttime wakefulness.
Oops - I mismoderated and need to post to undo it. Please mod parent up for speaking sense and being helpful! Just don't click the wrong thing like meeee!