Wow this all takes me back to an incident that happened in the 70s when I was a teenager getting ready to go to college.
My parents told me they'd get me a programmable calculator as a graduation present, but left it to me to decide what model I needed and where to get it.
I spent some time looking through magazines and newspapers (no internet!) and found a place that had a good price in New York (I think it probably was Brooklyn actually). We lived in central New Jersey so my father offered to drive up with me to get it. I believe I called the place and they had the calculator in stock (a Ti-58 if I remember).
We get there and the place looked like any other electronics or camera store in the area... windows covered with painted on "sale" "discount" signs, lots of equipment on display in the front window, etc.
We go inside and happily I see the calculator on display behind the counter for the price advertised... or so I thought.
The guy goes into the back room to get it, and is back there for some time. Finally he comes out with the box. He starts ringing it up, and then asks me if I want an AC adapter with that. Doesn't it come with an adapter? Ohhh no, that's $40 extra. Now I knew damn well that the calculator must have come with an adapter (it had a rechargeable battery pack) but I was so stunned by the bald face lie I didn't know what to say. Also we had driven for an hour to get there, and I wasn't about to go back without the calculator, so we actually did buy it. With the $40 extra it was about list price, so I can't say it was a total ripoff, but it was no good deal, and man did I feel played for a fool... I couldn't figure out what had happened, was I too eager to buy it? Could he tell we were from out of town? Did I look like a particularly gullible customer? It really bothered me.
From that point on I've been very wary about buying anything mail order (or now via internet) from firms in the New York city or northern New Jersey area that claim discounted prices. The only place I've ever done any mail order or internet business with from that area is J&R.
Interesting post... in particular the point about kids viewing lego as a 3D jigsaw puzzle. I think there's a lot of truth to that... but I'm not sure there's anything wrong with it. Different kids will have different motivations when they play... some may like the reassurance of having done something the "right" way. Some may feel more "grown up" if they follow the instructions. When I was a kid in the 70s playing with Lego I only had a fairly small set and didn't have any instructions. I always seemed to be missing the kind of piece I wanted... everything always seemed to come out sort of half baked. It was kind of frustrating, especially when I saw other kids with huge sets that had all kinds of exotic pieces.
Also note that one can now design ones own Lego project on a computer (http://www.lego.com/eng/create/digitaldesigner/), get a printout of the required pieces, take it to a Lego store and buy the parts needed to make it. So it seems Lego is trying to address the creative aspect as well...
Well no actually Apple sells PowerMacs as PCs... from their website:
"A dual-independent frontside bus architecture, an advanced system controller and high-speed, high-capacity memory combine to make the Power Mac G5 one of the fastest PCs ever built."
Well actually no. If you read the DART site, the particular system being tested depends on passive reflectors... i.e., the satellite was designed for automatic docking.
Could we develop a system for automated docking with a satellite that hadn't been designed for such? Possible, but a much harder problem, and frankly not worth the effort.
The DART work will support the new Exploration Mission... and you can be assured that any system that is developed will require satellites designed for automatic docking.
According to "Automated Rendezvous and Docking of Spacecraft" by Wigbert Fehse, the russian automated docking system, "Kurs," is "designed to provide all required navigation measurements during the entire approach from a few hundreds of kilometers down to contact." In other words, it does not require ground or space support to dock. This is also confirmed on:
As mentioned in other posts, the russians also developed a manual joystick/video docking system, "Toru," which can be used to dock instead of Kurs if desired. This is the system which caused the problem on MIR, not Kurs.
The russian system has active RF components on both the target and chase spacecraft which are used throughout the automated docking sequence.
The american system uses GPS instead of the RF beacons on the target for the initial approach. However, GPS is also RF based, so to my mind, that is not a huge difference... you could say the difference is that one provides absolute position information whereas the other provides relative information.
For the final approach (within 300m) the american system utilizes visual tracking of passive reflectors on the target to achieve docking. This is the primary difference between the two systems (the russians continue to use RF on final approach).
The potential benefits of the american approach are reduced weight and system complexity on the target. Whether this can achieve the same reliability as the russian system is of course unknown at present.
Perhaps erice's point was that unless you are in an environment that is free from competition you *cannot* forego masters.
Einstein worked for the Swiss patent office while developing the special theory of relativity, if I remember correctly... do the Swiss own special relativity?
Yeah, I'm not sure that UI design is an order of magnitude more difficult than software development... in both you have to factor the problem at hand in some appropriate manner, and test to see that it "works". I'd say the difference is that with UI design there's more of a question as to what "works" means...
I'd think elegance is key to users too, just different definitions of elegance. For a developer some sort of intellectual/logical elegance may be attractive, whereas for a user elegance of use to achieve a desired goal or set of goals is what's important.
Slashdot Mirror
I spent some time looking through magazines and newspapers (no internet!) and found a place that had a good price in New York (I think it probably was Brooklyn actually). We lived in central New Jersey so my father offered to drive up with me to get it. I believe I called the place and they had the calculator in stock (a Ti-58 if I remember).
We get there and the place looked like any other electronics or camera store in the area... windows covered with painted on "sale" "discount" signs, lots of equipment on display in the front window, etc.
We go inside and happily I see the calculator on display behind the counter for the price advertised... or so I thought.
The guy goes into the back room to get it, and is back there for some time. Finally he comes out with the box. He starts ringing it up, and then asks me if I want an AC adapter with that. Doesn't it come with an adapter? Ohhh no, that's $40 extra. Now I knew damn well that the calculator must have come with an adapter (it had a rechargeable battery pack) but I was so stunned by the bald face lie I didn't know what to say. Also we had driven for an hour to get there, and I wasn't about to go back without the calculator, so we actually did buy it. With the $40 extra it was about list price, so I can't say it was a total ripoff, but it was no good deal, and man did I feel played for a fool... I couldn't figure out what had happened, was I too eager to buy it? Could he tell we were from out of town? Did I look like a particularly gullible customer? It really bothered me.
From that point on I've been very wary about buying anything mail order (or now via internet) from firms in the New York city or northern New Jersey area that claim discounted prices. The only place I've ever done any mail order or internet business with from that area is J&R.
I see I was right to be wary...
Also note that one can now design ones own Lego project on a computer (http://www.lego.com/eng/create/digitaldesigner/), get a printout of the required pieces, take it to a Lego store and buy the parts needed to make it. So it seems Lego is trying to address the creative aspect as well...
"A dual-independent frontside bus architecture, an advanced system controller and high-speed, high-capacity memory combine to make the Power Mac G5 one of the fastest PCs ever built."
Could we develop a system for automated docking with a satellite that hadn't been designed for such? Possible, but a much harder problem, and frankly not worth the effort.
The DART work will support the new Exploration Mission... and you can be assured that any system that is developed will require satellites designed for automatic docking.
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/dart_into_spa ce.html
As mentioned in other posts, the russians also developed a manual joystick/video docking system, "Toru," which can be used to dock instead of Kurs if desired. This is the system which caused the problem on MIR, not Kurs.
The russian system has active RF components on both the target and chase spacecraft which are used throughout the automated docking sequence.
The american system uses GPS instead of the RF beacons on the target for the initial approach. However, GPS is also RF based, so to my mind, that is not a huge difference... you could say the difference is that one provides absolute position information whereas the other provides relative information.
For the final approach (within 300m) the american system utilizes visual tracking of passive reflectors on the target to achieve docking. This is the primary difference between the two systems (the russians continue to use RF on final approach).
The potential benefits of the american approach are reduced weight and system complexity on the target. Whether this can achieve the same reliability as the russian system is of course unknown at present.
Perhaps erice's point was that unless you are in an environment that is free from competition you *cannot* forego masters. Einstein worked for the Swiss patent office while developing the special theory of relativity, if I remember correctly... do the Swiss own special relativity?
Yeah, I'm not sure that UI design is an order of magnitude more difficult than software development... in both you have to factor the problem at hand in some appropriate manner, and test to see that it "works". I'd say the difference is that with UI design there's more of a question as to what "works" means...
I'd think elegance is key to users too, just different definitions of elegance. For a developer some sort of intellectual/logical elegance may be attractive, whereas for a user elegance of use to achieve a desired goal or set of goals is what's important.