"Production" consists of 100 cars worldwide. That's less than one tenth of the number of EV1 cars produced.
Until I can buy one at my local VW dealership, it ain't real and it ain't relevant. The world is full of "someday I'm gonna make this".
In any event, I have serious doubts it will meet US safety standards. As for the mileage claims... a low cD and a low frontal area and all that are nice, but you can't cheat physics. It takes a certain amount of energy to move a car around, and there's no getting around that. Even a little 50cc scooter only gets a little over 100mpg, and we're being told a two-passenger car capable of going 100mph with a vehicle weight of 1750 pounds gets three times that? I doubt it. In fact, I'll just plain call bullshit; that figure has to include propulsion from a full battery pack. Show me distance traveled where the battery pack has the same state at the beginning and conclusion of the run while burning 1 gallon of fuel; THAT is the "miles per gallon" that can ethically be claimed.
All that being said, it's not a bad-looking car (as eco-pharisee-mobiles go). I'd like to see it succeed, but first it has to be real and it has to be honest. There's also the little matter than I'm 6'2" tall with a 36" inseam. If it only fits oompa-loompas like the Lotus Elise (which I absolutely do not fit into, and believe me I've tried), forget it.
And it came to pass that, when Illuvatar had presented the Third Theme in which the coming of Men was foretold, Melkor in defiance awaited the moment in which the themes were echoed in canon. Then, in despite of Illuvatar, he did let forth a gut-rumbler that echoed through the Firmament, and one thread recounting the Themes of Illuvatar was extinguished. "See here," said Illuvatar, "that thou, Melkor, art an ass and a cretin. For my music hath already echoed when thou didst snuff out the thread. My Themes and your Music will be retold and recounted; thou art too late to prevent it."
"Verily," replied Melkor, "Thou hast spoken." And the Music and Third Theme continued. But Melkor, consumed with spite and sophomoric behaviors, awaited the next echo of the Themes and Music in canon, and covering his mouth with his hand, did let forth another sound of ailment of the stomach. The Valarauko around him did giggle, but Illuvatar was ill-pleased and knew full well who had let one rip, and shored up the echoed thread of the Theme by his will.
"Melkor, hie thee to my office," spoke Illuvatar, and the Ainur were abashed. "There shalt thou write ten thousand fold, 'I shall not belch during holy musics'."
And Melkor's resentment grew, for he now realized that the Music would be recounted, not once but twice, and no ailment of the stomach would interfere.
---
And this is why Tolkien fell over from an ulcer... and why Peter Jackson had one too but is getting successful treatment.
Modded down? Really? Yeah. Good ol' Slashdot. No longer a place where tech can be discussed with a modicum of civility, now just overrun by undereducated entitlement-children who behave as if this were YouTube commentary, while pretending they're some sort of technological elite. For those of you browsing at 1, the downmodded comment basically is "stop assuming your opponents are stupid just because they disagree with you".
I've always felt moderation should not be anonymous, and this is yet another example of why. "I don't agree with you so I will push my agenda by hiding your comment from others, and nobody will know who took that decision upon himself to do so!"
Jesus H Christ, why is a former comedian the smartest politician we have?
For the record "agree with" != "smart". We need to get over that. This attitude of "anyone who doesn't agree with me is stupid" is what Balkanizes a country. Learn that people who do not agree with you can do so for intelligent, well-researched, valid reasons. There are excellent arguments both for and against net neutrality, gun control, socialized medicine, capitalism, and just about any other issue.
Perhaps not pointless. In the city, it's the start-stop aspect which is the mileage killer. Regenerative systems capture some of the energy used to decelerate, and use it to re-accelerate later. This is responsible for a large part of the efficiency of electric hybrids in city usage. I'm not sure if the hydraulic system described in TFA is linked to braking, or would by nature of its design capture energy during deceleration, but if so it would definitely help in city use. In fact, that may be the only place in which it shows gains, but let's not underestimate that. Most minivan use IS city use.
There is also the advantage that it's not based upon rare earths or lithium, which have their own political "sourcing" issues and their own limitations on how much is available. In short- to medium-term timeframes, that could be more important than ultimate efficiency comparisons with electric hybrids.
The safety concern is a serious one. Unlike present applications mentioned in TFA (garbage trucks, busses), there is much less structure in a minivan-sized platform to protect the pressure vessel. Anyone remember the Pinto problem? This is solvable, though it will require more structure (meaning more weight) to protect it. Overall, the hydraulic subsystem + the weight of the protective structure are probably less than the weight of the electric subsystem including its batteries, so that may be a net gain over electric hybrids, but we won't know til we see specs.
Cap-and-trade has absolutely nothing to do with the environment. It is strictly an attempt to legislate and force the transfer of wealth from Western nations to non-Western nations. You'll notice the target is the US and wealthy European nations, but is not targeted at China. China emits more CO2 than the US. If this were truly about CO2, the outrage would be directed elsewhere and the "corrective action" would involve other measure. As soon as someone says "...but instead, you can just write me a big fact check", you know it's a scam.
That doesn't mean that the whole global warming thing is or isn't real, it just means someone's trying to get free money and is willing to say anything to get it.
Buy a copy of Richard Bartle's "Designing Virtual Worlds". He lists literally thousands of references in his discussions of online gaming.
Oh, and one other thing. Wikipedia may be an interesting start-point for researching something, but using it as a primary reference just sets you up for repeating someone else's mistakes/prejudices/agenda as fact. I've found errors of fact in many of the articles in which I have first-hand knowledge of the event, place, item, etc. of interest. If they're wrong that often on subjects which I know for sure what the facts actually are, why would other articles on which I don't have first-hand immediate knowledge be any better?
If it's MY computer, I'll put all the porn onto it I want. 3 terabyte drive, you say...
If it's MY computer, cold day in Hell before I give IT my passwords or allow any sort of monitoring/remote-disable functionality on it.
If it's MY computer, I'll take it in and out of the building any time I feel like it.
If it's MY computer, I'll put any hardware I want into it. Don't like the noise or puddles from the liquid cooling system I made from a Buick's radiator, or the RF from a Pringles-can WiFi antenna that doubles as a microwave oven to heat my lunch? Long walk, short plank, aluminum foil hats to the right.
If it's MY computer, the license status of everything on it is between me and the software publisher and my personal sense of ethics. IT doesn't get a say.
What sane IT department would put up with that? I certainly wouldn't. Security, legal exposure, downtime, compatibility... not a good deal. Conversely, the above rules are MY terms; I am extremely autocratic with my equipment. If the company wants any of the above privileges, we'll talk cash. I'm not going to be a welfare department for my employer. If they're so cheap that they can't afford to buy a new computer every few years when the old one is no longer useful, the paychecks will be bouncing too; companies like that aren't employers, they're bankruptcy cases that haven't filed yet.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, Capcom did not violate copyright. You cannot copyright a game mechanic, a character design, or a game concept. This isn't like Capcom pulled art assets out of Splosionman and resized them before putting them into Maxplosion, or put Splosionman through a disassembler and included chunks of the resulting code in their own game, or made a character or logo so similar that it would violate trademarks (remember, trademark law operates on very different principles than copyright law), Capcom has little to fear in the legal arena, and both sides know it. People saying "sue sue sue"... I understand the urge, but Twisted Pixel would lose lose lose. The case filing might even be rejected out-of-hand and never see a judge or jury.
That doesn't make what Capcom did right or ethical, though. The real fallout of this is that independent game developers and studios seeking a distributor or licensee will now look at Capcom and say "if they like my idea they'll just make a cheap knockoff. No way am I letting them anywhere near me, they simply cannot be trusted. Maybe I'll approach THQ or Ubisoft of Xynga instead.". And if you can't trust Capcom to not behave honorably when you reveal a fully-formed design to them during a pitch, how can you trust them on any other issue like, say, whether they will write you a check you are owed, or credit you for work you have done? Why would you want to do business with Capcom? Why would you want to work for Capcom? Why would you ever invite a Capcom employee into your office? Why would you ever view Capcom as anything other than a disk duplicator without morals or an "off"switch?
Yeah, if I were Capcom I'd be "sad" too. They've severely compromised their reputation among indie developers. Indies talk to each other... a lot... and word of this behavior will have already reached just about every indie that has seen even moderate success.
This, however, does not lessen the fact that many indie developers copy larger companies' (or each other's) games. Scrabble vs. Scrabulous, anyone? If it's not ethical for a big company to steal from little companies and individuals, then it's also not ethical for little companies and individuals to steal from little ones. It works both ways or neither way. Capcom behaved no differently from the army of shovelware (cr)app developers who put out knockoffs of just about every successful game ever. The difference is that we expect better from established companies, and that when an indie approaches a publisher there needs to be some trust that they aren't being used as unpaid designers. Capcom has lost that trust, and deservedly so.
Capcom used to occasionally come up with good games with original concepts. I guess those days are over for good now, eh?
The risk-reward-constraint issues with solid rocket boosters come down to this:
REWARD: solid rocket boosters have a better ratio of thrust-per-pound-of-motor, and single-segment SRBs are very reliable and mechanically simpler than liquid fuel. They are also cheaper in a pound-of-payload-to-orbit per dollar calculation when the entire cost is calculated.
RISK: multi-segment SRBs are more prone to failure than single-segment SRBs for many reasons (increased manufacturing complexity, increased vehicle assembly complexity, increased vehicle fragility, thermal issues, increased operational complexity. Managing this risk requires expensive solutions.
CONSTRAINTS: single-segment SRBs, because they have a maximum size, have a maximum amount of lift capacity. Larger than that and you either go multi-segment, and/or large clusters of single-segment SRBs, and/or single-segment SRBs which are staged. All of these increase complexity and expense, as well as driving up the failure rate.
Hybrid solutions arrive when you figure out the acceptable risk level, budgetary constraints, what your mission profile is, i.e. how much payload and whether it's suborbital, low orbit, high-orbit or beyond, and other factors such as immediacy of launch and acceptable pollution level from a launch (even hydrogen-oxygen systems pollute, as they are being fired in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, therefore you will get ozone and nitrous oxide by exposing N2 and O2 to the heat of the exhaust). You locate the points on these various axes for all the proposed solutions, and pick the one where the dots cluster closest together and all live inside the constraints.
Space is hard. I'm glad I don't have to be a rocket scientist, otherwise I'm sure what's left of my hair would fall out from sheer frustration:)
Manufacturing solid rocket motor fuel is, essentially, a casting operation: you pour the liquid into a mold, then the liquid sets into a solid in the shape you need (and the shape is critical in rocket motors). The trouble with the solid rocket boosters as used in the Shuttle is that they are so big you have to cast them in segments, then stack them and join them. Wherever there is a seam between the segments, the burning solid fuel tends to burn into that seam; this increases the surface area that is burning, which increases pressure, which increases burn rate, which increase pressure, ad explosium. It's a very difficult (meaning: expensive and risky) problem to manage, and as we found out with Challenger, cold temperatures can cause shrinkage which opens up those seams, changing the internal geometry of the motor. Multi-segment SRBs are just plain trouble.
As anyone who has worked in large-scale casting can tell you, there are limits as to how much you can cast in a single pour. Your liquid is cooling even as you pour it, changing in volume as it cools. If you pour in multiple phases, letting it cool between phases, you're introducing seams, and subsequent pours can partially remelt previous pours, causing expansion in the previous seam and possible cracking (which are uncontrolled seams and surface area... if your solid core has internal cracking, there is a very high chance of explosion). And large continuous pours also have the potential for cracking as the early parts of the pour solidify and cure while the later parts are still molten. This, plus limits on how large a segment of solid rocket fuel you can transport without flexing (cracking) safely, is what puts upper limits on single-segment solid rocket motors.
Solid rocket motor technology on large scales comes mostly from ICBMs. You want solid motors on your ICBMs, as a single-segment motor is more rugged than a liquid fueled motor, your launch vehicle is readily transportable and self-contained, does nto need a refueling infrastructure, and is always ready to use (keeping liquid fuels in tanks for a long period of time is dangerous and high-maintenance). ICBMs don't have to throw 60,000-plus pounds of payload into orbit, therefore they don't need engines larger than can be cast in a single segment.
Nothing wrong with SRBs for sub-orbital missions with moderate payloads, or orbital missions with small payloads. But for the mass that a heavy lift booster needs to throw into orbit and beyond, they just don't scale well.
The sad fact is that the political and budgetary environment are constraints of problem-solving at NASA, just as surely as mass, temperature, volume, gravity and materials technology are constraints. Any viable proposal needs to take into account and address ALL constraints.
This is why all senior NASA people seem to get grey hair early.
If this works, can they make tighty-whities out of these? Perhaps my co-workers will then allow me to have Indian food for lunch without banishing me from the building.
I hear people constantly bringing this up, but I fail to see why it's such a big deal. Be honest, AT&T iPhone owners: how often do you really use this feature?
I do. I use my iPhone as a moving-map GPS in a holder on the dash using Google Maps, often while on the phone (yes, through a headset, spare me the lecture). Google Maps pulls the map data live.
When I move to Verizon, I'll need to get a full GPS app, but it's worth it. I frequently need to drive to San Francisco, and let me tell you, the stories you hear about AT&T 3G being almost unusable in SF are true. A slow network that works all the time is better than a fast network that doesn't, and voice-or-data is better than no-voice-or-data-at-all.
And as for the lack of simultaneity for voice and data? VOIP is a possible solution, if I really need to. It will all depend upon what latency and jitter are like on Verizon's CDMA network.
What I'd be curious about is the extent to which this has changed player demographics.
Back when I was playing LotRO, one of the primary attractions was that the average player was several years older than on WoW and similar subscription-based MMOs (something in the early 30's, according to Turbine folks at Austin GDC). This had a significant effect: a whole lot less of the trash-talking and harassment that tends to come with younger playerbases. Free-to-play games such as Runescape tend to attract younger people (primarily for economic reasons), but with that comes more behavioral problems.
Can folks who have been through the change tell me whether the free-to-play model has brought a change in the "character" of the playerbase? I might want to come back, but not if the primary attraction (a serious, literary playerbase who are there for the backstory and setting) is now a "u r teh g@y" pit.
There are many valid reasons to not like smart-meter tech. However... health concerns? This is the same part of the country that has people who believe that "WiFi makes them sick".
Who'd have thought we'd see the day when Marin County and Kansas would be equally science-hostile... the next question is "are their schools teaching this RF-paranoia, and if so, should a high school diploma from Corte Madera be regarded with the same suspicion that a high school diploma from Kansas, in which 'counting Begats' is considered as valid as radio isotope decay dating?"
Oh, I'm fully capable of being a jackass. No argument there.
My point is not "if you disagree with me you don't work". It's "if you disagree for defensible reasons, great! Welcome aboard. But if you're the kind of person who engages in ad hominem attacks, who makes sweeping generalizations that are unsupportable, or who fails to realize that your perspective is not the only perspective, then interviewing with me is a waste of your time and mine." Attack the product, fine, but do so for solid, defensible, quantifiable, technical reasons. Resort to emotionalism, and you're not much of an engineer.
By the way. I'm not a business owner, though I have plans. I'm a sometimes-lead, sometimes-manager in quality assurance. In QA, the negative characteristics I mentioned (lack of empathy for the customer, assuming that your preconceptions trump the truth or the need to continually reevaluate and test, a mindset that is completely closed to anything that contradicts those preconceptions, and inability to get along with others) are deal-killers. Challenge me and have your facts in hand, and you're in. Hater? Know-it-all? Out.
Really, Apple has nothing to do with the discussion at hand (other than "I don't hire Apple-haters, or any-other-company-haters, but Apple-haters are the ones that self-identify the most readily"). The discussion is about standards of professional behavior. Having those standards and requiring those standards may make me a "jackass", but if so, I'll wear the title proudly.
I never said anything about forcing bad tools on anyone; that came from your mind, not mine. I'm sorry someone did that to you in the past, but that's irrelevant here. You're projecting, seeing pointy-haired bosses everywhere.
What I will say is that anyone who says "because I like this one OS/development environment/whatever for tasks that I happen to be good at, any other OS/development environment/whatever is always inferior. And so are the people who prefer anything that isn't my pet whatever." That's a hater. And that's someone that doesn't understand that THEIR pet tool is not universal. One of the characteristics of skilled developers and IT people is that they recognize that there is not now, nor ever shall be, one set of software tools that is universally superior in all environments for all purposes. They also recognize that widely-used tools are good for something, otherwise they never would have become widely-used. Another sign of willful ignorance: "If I don't see a good use for something, it doesn't exist, and never did."
As a corollary, sometimes there are excellent reasons why tools that aren't ideal for a specific task are used. Interoperability, licensing constraints, expense, the ability to hire more people who know how to use a wide-spread general-purpose software development tool vs. a hyperspecialized tool... these are all factors that are important in the big picture which a developer or IT person might not see, or might dismiss because it's not their personal problem to solve. It's seldom malice which leads to a directive that "we must use X to make this". Good companies expose those reasons internally, of course, but exposed or not, the reasons are always there.
Or, to restate, anyone who says "All Apple stuff is crap" or "Windows is garbage" or "GCC is the perfect compiler for everything" is willfully ignorant, and is looking to start arguments. Why would anyone hire someone who deliberately wallows in ignorance?
Holding customers in contempt... there's no defense for that. Ever. Customers may not have the extensive education necessary to produce a product, but they're the ones who have to use it, and they're the ones you have to convince to pay for it. The customer is not always right, but they're always the ones you have to take care of (or you don't get paid). A company that doesn't have sympathy for its customers (particularly a company that makes consumer-focused software) is doomed to failure. It's also a personal failing; any time you assume someone who isn't skilled with a given sophisticated tool is an "idiot", you can bet they're trash-talking you and everyone else around you behind their backs. These are the team-breakers. Not cool, not acceptable, not hired.
You accuse me of being pure-dollar. Hardly. The overriding theme here is that I believe that hateful prima donnas do not produce good products, that being a bad person does not make up for good talent, and that the care and feeding of a single superstar at the direct expense of everyone around them is just not worth it. I also feel that treating a hostile-but-talented worker preferentially is unethical, as it directly rewards bad behavior and directly harms others exhibiting good behavior. If I were pure-dollar, I'd be stating "we're not here to hold hands and sing Kum By Ya, and NeckBeard here writes the best code, so suck up his tirades, you average workers". Exactly the opposite. I believe that teams produce winning products, not superstars, and that whenever you have to choose between the single superstar and the hardworking regular team, you choose the team.
Never coddle a jackass, no matter how talented. And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster help you if a jackass working for you comes into contact with an "idiot" customer and behaves... predictably. Your company and your jackass will instantly become a YouTube star, and not in a good way.
Slashdot Mirror
"Production" consists of 100 cars worldwide. That's less than one tenth of the number of EV1 cars produced.
Until I can buy one at my local VW dealership, it ain't real and it ain't relevant. The world is full of "someday I'm gonna make this".
In any event, I have serious doubts it will meet US safety standards. As for the mileage claims... a low cD and a low frontal area and all that are nice, but you can't cheat physics. It takes a certain amount of energy to move a car around, and there's no getting around that. Even a little 50cc scooter only gets a little over 100mpg, and we're being told a two-passenger car capable of going 100mph with a vehicle weight of 1750 pounds gets three times that? I doubt it. In fact, I'll just plain call bullshit; that figure has to include propulsion from a full battery pack. Show me distance traveled where the battery pack has the same state at the beginning and conclusion of the run while burning 1 gallon of fuel; THAT is the "miles per gallon" that can ethically be claimed.
All that being said, it's not a bad-looking car (as eco-pharisee-mobiles go). I'd like to see it succeed, but first it has to be real and it has to be honest. There's also the little matter than I'm 6'2" tall with a 36" inseam. If it only fits oompa-loompas like the Lotus Elise (which I absolutely do not fit into, and believe me I've tried), forget it.
And it came to pass that, when Illuvatar had presented the Third Theme in which the coming of Men was foretold, Melkor in defiance awaited the moment in which the themes were echoed in canon. Then, in despite of Illuvatar, he did let forth a gut-rumbler that echoed through the Firmament, and one thread recounting the Themes of Illuvatar was extinguished. "See here," said Illuvatar, "that thou, Melkor, art an ass and a cretin. For my music hath already echoed when thou didst snuff out the thread. My Themes and your Music will be retold and recounted; thou art too late to prevent it."
"Verily," replied Melkor, "Thou hast spoken." And the Music and Third Theme continued. But Melkor, consumed with spite and sophomoric behaviors, awaited the next echo of the Themes and Music in canon, and covering his mouth with his hand, did let forth another sound of ailment of the stomach. The Valarauko around him did giggle, but Illuvatar was ill-pleased and knew full well who had let one rip, and shored up the echoed thread of the Theme by his will.
"Melkor, hie thee to my office," spoke Illuvatar, and the Ainur were abashed. "There shalt thou write ten thousand fold, 'I shall not belch during holy musics'."
And Melkor's resentment grew, for he now realized that the Music would be recounted, not once but twice, and no ailment of the stomach would interfere. ---
And this is why Tolkien fell over from an ulcer... and why Peter Jackson had one too but is getting successful treatment.
Modded down? Really? Yeah. Good ol' Slashdot. No longer a place where tech can be discussed with a modicum of civility, now just overrun by undereducated entitlement-children who behave as if this were YouTube commentary, while pretending they're some sort of technological elite. For those of you browsing at 1, the downmodded comment basically is "stop assuming your opponents are stupid just because they disagree with you".
I've always felt moderation should not be anonymous, and this is yet another example of why. "I don't agree with you so I will push my agenda by hiding your comment from others, and nobody will know who took that decision upon himself to do so!"
Jesus H Christ, why is a former comedian the smartest politician we have?
For the record "agree with" != "smart". We need to get over that. This attitude of "anyone who doesn't agree with me is stupid" is what Balkanizes a country. Learn that people who do not agree with you can do so for intelligent, well-researched, valid reasons. There are excellent arguments both for and against net neutrality, gun control, socialized medicine, capitalism, and just about any other issue.
...did he say if you should wear a condom while using the internet?
People want to know!!!
Catholic. Condom. You answer your own question.
Berne Convention. That's what it was all about. Globally Enforced Copyright law.
And anyone who doesn't agree gets their copyrights raped with impunity. Oh, and trade sanctions.
# There. FTFY.
Oh, that would certainly save energy, by reducing traffic... two cars at a time. :)
Perhaps not pointless. In the city, it's the start-stop aspect which is the mileage killer. Regenerative systems capture some of the energy used to decelerate, and use it to re-accelerate later. This is responsible for a large part of the efficiency of electric hybrids in city usage. I'm not sure if the hydraulic system described in TFA is linked to braking, or would by nature of its design capture energy during deceleration, but if so it would definitely help in city use. In fact, that may be the only place in which it shows gains, but let's not underestimate that. Most minivan use IS city use.
There is also the advantage that it's not based upon rare earths or lithium, which have their own political "sourcing" issues and their own limitations on how much is available. In short- to medium-term timeframes, that could be more important than ultimate efficiency comparisons with electric hybrids.
The safety concern is a serious one. Unlike present applications mentioned in TFA (garbage trucks, busses), there is much less structure in a minivan-sized platform to protect the pressure vessel. Anyone remember the Pinto problem? This is solvable, though it will require more structure (meaning more weight) to protect it. Overall, the hydraulic subsystem + the weight of the protective structure are probably less than the weight of the electric subsystem including its batteries, so that may be a net gain over electric hybrids, but we won't know til we see specs.
Cap-and-trade has absolutely nothing to do with the environment. It is strictly an attempt to legislate and force the transfer of wealth from Western nations to non-Western nations. You'll notice the target is the US and wealthy European nations, but is not targeted at China. China emits more CO2 than the US. If this were truly about CO2, the outrage would be directed elsewhere and the "corrective action" would involve other measure. As soon as someone says "...but instead, you can just write me a big fact check", you know it's a scam.
That doesn't mean that the whole global warming thing is or isn't real, it just means someone's trying to get free money and is willing to say anything to get it.
Buy a copy of Richard Bartle's "Designing Virtual Worlds". He lists literally thousands of references in his discussions of online gaming.
Oh, and one other thing. Wikipedia may be an interesting start-point for researching something, but using it as a primary reference just sets you up for repeating someone else's mistakes/prejudices/agenda as fact. I've found errors of fact in many of the articles in which I have first-hand knowledge of the event, place, item, etc. of interest. If they're wrong that often on subjects which I know for sure what the facts actually are, why would other articles on which I don't have first-hand immediate knowledge be any better?
A sense of schadenfreude without the usual guilt is giving a bounce to my steps. Cap-and-traders got their noses bloodied, tra-la-la-la-la!
And why was there no press conference to announce he had sold $1.4 billion in Apple shares in the 3 days before his announcement.
Look, Ma. No mention of the Great Satan at all. There was no announcement because it DIDN'T HAPPEN.
If cranks can power an OLPC, Slashdot should be able to light up Las Vegas.
What sane IT department would put up with that? I certainly wouldn't. Security, legal exposure, downtime, compatibility... not a good deal. Conversely, the above rules are MY terms; I am extremely autocratic with my equipment. If the company wants any of the above privileges, we'll talk cash. I'm not going to be a welfare department for my employer. If they're so cheap that they can't afford to buy a new computer every few years when the old one is no longer useful, the paychecks will be bouncing too; companies like that aren't employers, they're bankruptcy cases that haven't filed yet.
Really, it's a lose-lose situation.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, Capcom did not violate copyright. You cannot copyright a game mechanic, a character design, or a game concept. This isn't like Capcom pulled art assets out of Splosionman and resized them before putting them into Maxplosion, or put Splosionman through a disassembler and included chunks of the resulting code in their own game, or made a character or logo so similar that it would violate trademarks (remember, trademark law operates on very different principles than copyright law), Capcom has little to fear in the legal arena, and both sides know it. People saying "sue sue sue"... I understand the urge, but Twisted Pixel would lose lose lose. The case filing might even be rejected out-of-hand and never see a judge or jury.
That doesn't make what Capcom did right or ethical, though. The real fallout of this is that independent game developers and studios seeking a distributor or licensee will now look at Capcom and say "if they like my idea they'll just make a cheap knockoff. No way am I letting them anywhere near me, they simply cannot be trusted. Maybe I'll approach THQ or Ubisoft of Xynga instead.". And if you can't trust Capcom to not behave honorably when you reveal a fully-formed design to them during a pitch, how can you trust them on any other issue like, say, whether they will write you a check you are owed, or credit you for work you have done? Why would you want to do business with Capcom? Why would you want to work for Capcom? Why would you ever invite a Capcom employee into your office? Why would you ever view Capcom as anything other than a disk duplicator without morals or an "off"switch?
Yeah, if I were Capcom I'd be "sad" too. They've severely compromised their reputation among indie developers. Indies talk to each other... a lot... and word of this behavior will have already reached just about every indie that has seen even moderate success.
This, however, does not lessen the fact that many indie developers copy larger companies' (or each other's) games. Scrabble vs. Scrabulous, anyone? If it's not ethical for a big company to steal from little companies and individuals, then it's also not ethical for little companies and individuals to steal from little ones. It works both ways or neither way. Capcom behaved no differently from the army of shovelware (cr)app developers who put out knockoffs of just about every successful game ever. The difference is that we expect better from established companies, and that when an indie approaches a publisher there needs to be some trust that they aren't being used as unpaid designers. Capcom has lost that trust, and deservedly so.
Capcom used to occasionally come up with good games with original concepts. I guess those days are over for good now, eh?
The fact that it's reverting to what it was before suggests otherwise.
The risk-reward-constraint issues with solid rocket boosters come down to this:
REWARD: solid rocket boosters have a better ratio of thrust-per-pound-of-motor, and single-segment SRBs are very reliable and mechanically simpler than liquid fuel. They are also cheaper in a pound-of-payload-to-orbit per dollar calculation when the entire cost is calculated.
RISK: multi-segment SRBs are more prone to failure than single-segment SRBs for many reasons (increased manufacturing complexity, increased vehicle assembly complexity, increased vehicle fragility, thermal issues, increased operational complexity. Managing this risk requires expensive solutions.
CONSTRAINTS: single-segment SRBs, because they have a maximum size, have a maximum amount of lift capacity. Larger than that and you either go multi-segment, and/or large clusters of single-segment SRBs, and/or single-segment SRBs which are staged. All of these increase complexity and expense, as well as driving up the failure rate.
Hybrid solutions arrive when you figure out the acceptable risk level, budgetary constraints, what your mission profile is, i.e. how much payload and whether it's suborbital, low orbit, high-orbit or beyond, and other factors such as immediacy of launch and acceptable pollution level from a launch (even hydrogen-oxygen systems pollute, as they are being fired in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, therefore you will get ozone and nitrous oxide by exposing N2 and O2 to the heat of the exhaust). You locate the points on these various axes for all the proposed solutions, and pick the one where the dots cluster closest together and all live inside the constraints.
Space is hard. I'm glad I don't have to be a rocket scientist, otherwise I'm sure what's left of my hair would fall out from sheer frustration :)
Manufacturing solid rocket motor fuel is, essentially, a casting operation: you pour the liquid into a mold, then the liquid sets into a solid in the shape you need (and the shape is critical in rocket motors). The trouble with the solid rocket boosters as used in the Shuttle is that they are so big you have to cast them in segments, then stack them and join them. Wherever there is a seam between the segments, the burning solid fuel tends to burn into that seam; this increases the surface area that is burning, which increases pressure, which increases burn rate, which increase pressure, ad explosium. It's a very difficult (meaning: expensive and risky) problem to manage, and as we found out with Challenger, cold temperatures can cause shrinkage which opens up those seams, changing the internal geometry of the motor. Multi-segment SRBs are just plain trouble.
As anyone who has worked in large-scale casting can tell you, there are limits as to how much you can cast in a single pour. Your liquid is cooling even as you pour it, changing in volume as it cools. If you pour in multiple phases, letting it cool between phases, you're introducing seams, and subsequent pours can partially remelt previous pours, causing expansion in the previous seam and possible cracking (which are uncontrolled seams and surface area... if your solid core has internal cracking, there is a very high chance of explosion). And large continuous pours also have the potential for cracking as the early parts of the pour solidify and cure while the later parts are still molten. This, plus limits on how large a segment of solid rocket fuel you can transport without flexing (cracking) safely, is what puts upper limits on single-segment solid rocket motors.
Solid rocket motor technology on large scales comes mostly from ICBMs. You want solid motors on your ICBMs, as a single-segment motor is more rugged than a liquid fueled motor, your launch vehicle is readily transportable and self-contained, does nto need a refueling infrastructure, and is always ready to use (keeping liquid fuels in tanks for a long period of time is dangerous and high-maintenance). ICBMs don't have to throw 60,000-plus pounds of payload into orbit, therefore they don't need engines larger than can be cast in a single segment.
Nothing wrong with SRBs for sub-orbital missions with moderate payloads, or orbital missions with small payloads. But for the mass that a heavy lift booster needs to throw into orbit and beyond, they just don't scale well.
The sad fact is that the political and budgetary environment are constraints of problem-solving at NASA, just as surely as mass, temperature, volume, gravity and materials technology are constraints. Any viable proposal needs to take into account and address ALL constraints.
This is why all senior NASA people seem to get grey hair early.
If this works, can they make tighty-whities out of these? Perhaps my co-workers will then allow me to have Indian food for lunch without banishing me from the building.
"Dammit, who's turning the air green again?"
Yes, but by the time they got to the third captcha you'd need to replace the keyboard.
Bad: No simultaneous voice/data.
I hear people constantly bringing this up, but I fail to see why it's such a big deal. Be honest, AT&T iPhone owners: how often do you really use this feature?
I do. I use my iPhone as a moving-map GPS in a holder on the dash using Google Maps, often while on the phone (yes, through a headset, spare me the lecture). Google Maps pulls the map data live.
When I move to Verizon, I'll need to get a full GPS app, but it's worth it. I frequently need to drive to San Francisco, and let me tell you, the stories you hear about AT&T 3G being almost unusable in SF are true. A slow network that works all the time is better than a fast network that doesn't, and voice-or-data is better than no-voice-or-data-at-all.
And as for the lack of simultaneity for voice and data? VOIP is a possible solution, if I really need to. It will all depend upon what latency and jitter are like on Verizon's CDMA network.
What I'd be curious about is the extent to which this has changed player demographics.
Back when I was playing LotRO, one of the primary attractions was that the average player was several years older than on WoW and similar subscription-based MMOs (something in the early 30's, according to Turbine folks at Austin GDC). This had a significant effect: a whole lot less of the trash-talking and harassment that tends to come with younger playerbases. Free-to-play games such as Runescape tend to attract younger people (primarily for economic reasons), but with that comes more behavioral problems.
Can folks who have been through the change tell me whether the free-to-play model has brought a change in the "character" of the playerbase? I might want to come back, but not if the primary attraction (a serious, literary playerbase who are there for the backstory and setting) is now a "u r teh g@y" pit.
There are many valid reasons to not like smart-meter tech. However... health concerns? This is the same part of the country that has people who believe that "WiFi makes them sick".
Who'd have thought we'd see the day when Marin County and Kansas would be equally science-hostile... the next question is "are their schools teaching this RF-paranoia, and if so, should a high school diploma from Corte Madera be regarded with the same suspicion that a high school diploma from Kansas, in which 'counting Begats' is considered as valid as radio isotope decay dating?"
Oh, I'm fully capable of being a jackass. No argument there.
My point is not "if you disagree with me you don't work". It's "if you disagree for defensible reasons, great! Welcome aboard. But if you're the kind of person who engages in ad hominem attacks, who makes sweeping generalizations that are unsupportable, or who fails to realize that your perspective is not the only perspective, then interviewing with me is a waste of your time and mine." Attack the product, fine, but do so for solid, defensible, quantifiable, technical reasons. Resort to emotionalism, and you're not much of an engineer.
By the way. I'm not a business owner, though I have plans. I'm a sometimes-lead, sometimes-manager in quality assurance. In QA, the negative characteristics I mentioned (lack of empathy for the customer, assuming that your preconceptions trump the truth or the need to continually reevaluate and test, a mindset that is completely closed to anything that contradicts those preconceptions, and inability to get along with others) are deal-killers. Challenge me and have your facts in hand, and you're in. Hater? Know-it-all? Out.
Really, Apple has nothing to do with the discussion at hand (other than "I don't hire Apple-haters, or any-other-company-haters, but Apple-haters are the ones that self-identify the most readily"). The discussion is about standards of professional behavior. Having those standards and requiring those standards may make me a "jackass", but if so, I'll wear the title proudly.
Perhaps I should elaborate.
I never said anything about forcing bad tools on anyone; that came from your mind, not mine. I'm sorry someone did that to you in the past, but that's irrelevant here. You're projecting, seeing pointy-haired bosses everywhere.
What I will say is that anyone who says "because I like this one OS/development environment/whatever for tasks that I happen to be good at, any other OS/development environment/whatever is always inferior. And so are the people who prefer anything that isn't my pet whatever." That's a hater. And that's someone that doesn't understand that THEIR pet tool is not universal. One of the characteristics of skilled developers and IT people is that they recognize that there is not now, nor ever shall be, one set of software tools that is universally superior in all environments for all purposes. They also recognize that widely-used tools are good for something, otherwise they never would have become widely-used. Another sign of willful ignorance: "If I don't see a good use for something, it doesn't exist, and never did."
As a corollary, sometimes there are excellent reasons why tools that aren't ideal for a specific task are used. Interoperability, licensing constraints, expense, the ability to hire more people who know how to use a wide-spread general-purpose software development tool vs. a hyperspecialized tool... these are all factors that are important in the big picture which a developer or IT person might not see, or might dismiss because it's not their personal problem to solve. It's seldom malice which leads to a directive that "we must use X to make this". Good companies expose those reasons internally, of course, but exposed or not, the reasons are always there.
Or, to restate, anyone who says "All Apple stuff is crap" or "Windows is garbage" or "GCC is the perfect compiler for everything" is willfully ignorant, and is looking to start arguments. Why would anyone hire someone who deliberately wallows in ignorance?
Holding customers in contempt... there's no defense for that. Ever. Customers may not have the extensive education necessary to produce a product, but they're the ones who have to use it, and they're the ones you have to convince to pay for it. The customer is not always right, but they're always the ones you have to take care of (or you don't get paid). A company that doesn't have sympathy for its customers (particularly a company that makes consumer-focused software) is doomed to failure. It's also a personal failing; any time you assume someone who isn't skilled with a given sophisticated tool is an "idiot", you can bet they're trash-talking you and everyone else around you behind their backs. These are the team-breakers. Not cool, not acceptable, not hired.
You accuse me of being pure-dollar. Hardly. The overriding theme here is that I believe that hateful prima donnas do not produce good products, that being a bad person does not make up for good talent, and that the care and feeding of a single superstar at the direct expense of everyone around them is just not worth it. I also feel that treating a hostile-but-talented worker preferentially is unethical, as it directly rewards bad behavior and directly harms others exhibiting good behavior. If I were pure-dollar, I'd be stating "we're not here to hold hands and sing Kum By Ya, and NeckBeard here writes the best code, so suck up his tirades, you average workers". Exactly the opposite. I believe that teams produce winning products, not superstars, and that whenever you have to choose between the single superstar and the hardworking regular team, you choose the team.
Never coddle a jackass, no matter how talented. And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster help you if a jackass working for you comes into contact with an "idiot" customer and behaves... predictably. Your company and your jackass will instantly become a YouTube star, and not in a good way.