reynoldbot
Jupiter
A paper-white mask of evil.
Posts: 790
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Post by reynoldbot on Feb 2, 2008 6:39:25 GMT -4
The creative field I work in is often filled with bloated projects and ideas as well from both sides of the fence (artists and art directors). In my class today we presented projects we will spend the remainder of the year making, and some of the proposals were ridiculously complex and would require a whole volume of back story itself to fully explain their characters' motivations. In essense we get about 12 weeks to complete these projects, which totals about 14 comic pages and a printed book and these students were talking about things that could never get done. I don't think even Jack Kirby could keep up with some of these kids' proposals.
On the flip side, as a freelancer I inescapably will encounter art directors that fully intend to control literally every line I draw or color I choose, and will ask for major changes to be done mere hours before the final deadline. They get this feeling that by hiring artists they can live vicariously through them, or even perversely harvest them for their talents with no regard for the brain attached to the hands they exploit. Most art directors will be perfectly wonderful to work with, but us freelancers always fear and dread our next project may be a cheap ticket to Hell.
I thank my lucky stars every day for photoshop, which has made alterations a million times easier and faster to make.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Feb 2, 2008 10:48:32 GMT -4
The moral is that every feature you add comes at a cost. It costs to develop it. It costs to support and maintain it. But it most heinously costs in how it complicates the entire system, including those features that need to work well and would be straightforward to build by themselves.
You have no idea how unnecessarily-clever code can hold a programming staff hostage to it for years on end. And by "you have no idea," I mean, "you know exactly what I am talking about."
Cleverness can take many forms including extraneous features but also ill-advised workarounds that appear to eliminate the need to add new features to the system. One can be tempted by what at first appears to be a quick hack or kludge that gets the project out the door, but which grows like a tumor over time because once in place, it remains marginally easier to add to the "clever" workaround than to take the time to refactor it or redo it as something more useful and maintainable in the long run.
The staff should think about the task by asking themselves, "What are we trying to do here?" and then answering in the simplest and most straightforward way possible. Such clearheaded descriptions will often suggest the most comprehensible and maintainable code and data structures.
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Post by scubadude402 on Feb 2, 2008 12:07:48 GMT -4
Jay-What is your current assesment of the space shuttle system? Is it obselete? unsafe? Given the chance would you fly on it as its currently desgined? If not, why? Thanks-joe
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Post by JayUtah on Feb 2, 2008 13:28:44 GMT -4
Current assessment? Design by committee. Of course that was always my assessment. It has its charm: reusability, and heavy-lift capability, and a 7-crew capacity. But it was essentially flawed from the start.
Obsolete? No.
Unsafe? Yes, in that it never met its own safety goals. And it's not being managed particularly well. It can't be flown both safety and cost-effectively. But the safety issues are mostly inherent.
Would I fly on it currently? Kind of a loaded question. It's like a choice between riding a rickety roller coaster or sitting on a bench.
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Post by wdmundt on Feb 2, 2008 13:43:27 GMT -4
Is one of the current issues with returning to the moon that it has to be done within a fixed budget? It's my understanding that science is taking a hit to pay for this. Hasn't NASA delayed or canceled several climate observation satellites?
I think if we want to go back to the moon, we should be willing to pay for it without compromising the other work NASA is doing.
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reynoldbot
Jupiter
A paper-white mask of evil.
Posts: 790
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Post by reynoldbot on Feb 2, 2008 21:12:04 GMT -4
NASA is stuck in a continuous catch-22 where it can't get justify the funding it needs because without the funding it hasn't been able to impress lawmakers enough to give it the funding it needs to impress the lawmakers more. NASA just needs to find a new way to convince people to spend money on it so it can do the things it's supposed to do. We will never put people on Mars until we can reinvigorate in people the thirst for exploration.
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Post by Bing Gordon on Feb 6, 2008 20:40:55 GMT -4
....NASA just needs to find a new way to convince people to spend money on it so it can do the things it's supposed to do.... . Just a thought, If China`s new incursions into spaceflight go so far as reaching the Moon, and they start aiming towards a manned Mars landing, would it be enough to reignite funding and enthusiasm for funding NASA? Does "exploration" ignite as much enthusiasm within governments as "competetion" with another state with a completely different and opposing ideology would?
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