Wait...

Uses an example of cold-welding to set the premise for the talk.
Psych! - Example was not actually cold-welding.

His second example, the Galileo Jupiter mission, didn't explain why we *thought* cold-welding was a result of a malfunction, and I've no idea how that information would come about because the craft never returned to earth.

wtf? Are these shows really getting so bad? I had more respect for this guy.

As a person who actually grows much of my own produce, I can say definitively that many of their numbers are WAY off. They require one to pay one's self $100 per month for produce shopping to come up with their $1400 per year 'savings', but claim 5 minutes a day for 'harvest time'...good luck with that if you're not living on just lettuce and cauliflower...peas and beans will take 3 times that. They claim $6 for seeds, but the seeds I buy are over $3 per packet, so that's only 2 vegetables at a time...not much variety. I also note they have no cost for soil, the bed, fertilizers, pest control methods/time, disease control, etc. They also arbitrarily put the maintenance time at :30 min per month...that doesn't seem really realistic for an outdoor robot. Keep in mind that a single break down can mean the loss of an entire crop, depending on how it malfunctions. They also don't give an expected lifespan...or guarantee/warranty, so there's little way to know yet if it will last a single season, much less the 4-5 they say it takes to pay off.

It would have made much more sense to me if they had compared it to growing a home garden by hand, as that's what it's replacing, not the grocery store.

Don't get me wrong, I love this idea and would take one in a second if someone offered, I just don't see it as cost effective at $3-4K. Once the bugs are worked out so it lasts 10 years and the DIY cost is down to $1K(+-), then I'll think they have something pretty good that could also save people money. Being totally open source, I have hope that it will evolve quickly and be clearly viable in the near future. The time is coming when I won't be able to do the home farming I do today...it would be great to have a metallic yard slave to take over for me when that time comes.

When right brain picks up a Rubik's cube because it was asked to, left brain has no knowledge of that. So when the Rubik's cube is passed into the hand controlled by left brain, how does left brain know to even receive the item? Is it acting on habit - i.e. it's so used to cooperating with left brain and body parts that it accepts things left brain offers? And in that case, is the incorrect explanation from left brain influenced by what it thinks right brain wants? For favourite colour - is each side influenced by what it thinks the other prefers?

I suspect viral marketing techniques like anthropomorphising body parts is taking away slightly from the truth. It's a fun conclusion that captures the imagination to say that there are two entities, one in thrall to the other, but we are talking about a malfunctioning brain so the conclusions need careful consideration. These type of things can be a little economical with the truth to paint a better picture, I know the physics ones are on occasion.

It was fun, very limited. But god damn, the music, the sound effects, people flying through the air when their jump packs malfunction. It's like crack for your childhood memories.

How the hell could the Speaker not be an elected member of Congress? I'd guess the Founding Fathers never imagined a situation where that would have to come up. The fact that there are 40 idiots who think compromise is a sign of weakness, and don't want to govern, they want to be cry babies and throw a tantrum until they get what they want, would make me not want the job either. Bridge building between both sides of the isle used to be a good thing. Shutting down the government for said tantrum should be against the Constitution.

Meanwhile side note. From what I understand, Heath's improved the button malfunction as there was an actual malfunction in the real detonation device causing a delay. It likely saved the scene, otherwise we'd have seen him walk out and cut right to the bus driving away, or explosions from other angles until that point anyhow.

Cutaway shot at :50 because her wardrobe wasn't malfunctioning enough.

What is his major malfunction!?!

I've loved him as an actor since Full Metal Jacket. If you don't know it's him, you would never recognize him. Amazing transformation.

[author flagged as a spammer - redacted]

Your video, Cat Malfunction, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

EV-9D9 was a sadistic Droid who tortured droids for fun, not to actually get information from them. She was a malfunctioning interrogation droid that in malfunction switched to torturing droids instead of humans as she was originally programed.

"EV-9D9 was just one of the malfunctioning EV-series supervisor/interrogator droid abominations created by MerenData and was one of the few droids who escaped capture when the EV-series supervisor/interrogator droid was to be destroyed after owners of the droids found out their cruel nature. While at Cloud City EV-9D9 added to herself a third eye just next to her left eye, which could "see" the droid equivalent of pain, which manifested as jumbled, incoherent signals. She had a pain simulator and a sadomasochistic personality, which was caused by an accidentally installed MDF motivator, taking great pleasure in the pain of droids. "
--http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/EV-9D9

For anyone that hasn't followed what this is about...

For the problems itemized in this video.
Loss of :
- power brake assist
- airbags
- power steering.

This affair was actually about 1 specific issue :
The detent in the key socket rotator was not as strong as it should have been.

What that specifically meant was that :
IF you had a large heavy keychain on your key, and you jerked it, or knocked it such that it swings hard, the keychain could pull on the key hard enough to turn the key to the OFF position.

So when the car would turn off, you'd lose the power brakes, power steering, and airbags would be inactive.

Under "normal" circumstances, this wasn't a problem.
But for the folks with a christmas tree hanging off of their key, it was a chance to turn off their car while driving.

(side note : Crying about the power steering and power brakes really misses the big issue : The steering lock can kick in while moving... which apparently no one gave enough of a crap about to think for the 2 seconds it takes to notice that elephant in the room)



In this case, the contention over whether or not the core problem with the key socket was negligence boils down to semantics.

Car companies buy their parts from sub contractors.
They spec out the parts, and sub contractors manufacture the parts 'to spec'.

The spec isn't a 'hard' requirement.
If you say "5 Newtons of force", that doesn't mean that 4.999999999999123 Newtons is unacceptable.

Actually, it's standard for ~all parts to not be exactly the spec. They just have to be 'close enough to work right'.

And for that matter, many of the numbers in various specs are 'off the cuff' values that are 'generally known to work fine'. Getting hung up on a specific number isn't salient - what matters is 'does it work right?'.

So the question becomes, what is "good enough to work right?".
In practice, that ends up being a judgment call. Often made by engineers that try out the parts.


Here's where congress and GM differed.

Congress said : The ignition socket wasn't 100% exactly what GM had in the spec that they sent to the subcontractors, so it was wrong from day 1, and they knew it wasn't 100% the spec since pre-production. Hence, GM was negligent.

GM said : Of course it wasn't 100% exactly the spec. That was to be expected. At the time, we had no indication that the actual provided part was so far out of spec that it would not work right.


My personal take :
If this was something as simple as 'actual malfunctions/breakages of parts', then it would be black and white.
But in these cases, nothing was actually broken or malfunctioning.
So you had to rely on statistics and analysis to identify the issue.
Statistics require data, data requires evidence, evidence requires time to collect.
Seeing as how the vast majority of cars had no problem, this isn't the kind of thing that just leaps out at you.

Since any given car, when made in massive quantities, will have all kinds of multiple complaints about multiple systems, you can't just go back and point at incident(s) X and Y and say that it was the smoking gun - because if it was, then you'd have a pile of smoking guns for every other part out there.
Every instance of every part has a small chance of going bad, and with enough cars, you'll have a lot of 'item A went bad' reports to sift through.
You can't jump to the conclusion after the first couple reports that the part is improper, and it's unrealistic to expect anyone to immediately make that conclusion.
In order to make an informed determination, you simply need a pattern to emerge.

(I listened to the CSPAN coverage of the hearings while driving.)

-scheherazade

Your video, Cheerleader Wardrobe Malfunction, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Not the kind of wardrobe malfunction most would most expect most.

So the smiley-face is supposed to excuse ad-hom, bunny-man?? You could have called him a 'cunt' 'asshole', 'dipshit', any of these would be in violation of civil rules of decorum.

Could this obvious hypocritical double-standard applied to users who disgust you speak to a fundamental personality flaw which makes you just as anti-social as you accuse others of being?

Could pushing the rules of the sift to the brink indicate a personal loathing of anyone who has an opinion other than your own that you then personally deem 'unworthy' of your time when it could have been a springboard for another direction in this thread?

Maybe not, you gave Yogi time enough to label him 'twat' (which I suppose isn't so bad since 'twat' is socially acceptable in jest, etc. in certain countries.

Use that term with reference to a woman in America and see how long it takes your nose to flow red.

How about ya go feed yer bunny and who cares why people of faith bother you so much, sounds like a personal malfunction. Perhaps everything really is, all about you.