Posted by: RickC at February 28, 2014 05:24 AM (swpgw)
4
Also, I wonder how long the author's been holding that secret.
Posted by: RickC at February 28, 2014 05:24 AM (swpgw)
5
Remember when Florence mentioned that the early experiments on making smarter chimps were abandoned because the chimps couldn't relate to human feelings? And how mayor commented that she'd met Dr. Bowman, and just didn't trust him?
And who could forget all the freak "coincidences" involving the robot factories crashing into the ocean, catching fire, etc. so that only robots that used a variant of Bowman's brain design could be built?
The human colonists isolated Dr. Bowman in a Polar prison, in a building with no handle on the inside of the door, and his guards clearly fear what he's capable of. They even installed a firewall on the coffee maker, but it still wasn't enough to keep Bowman in check.
I'm beginning to think that the "good Doctor" is actually a mad-scientist super-villain!
Posted by: Siergen at February 28, 2014 06:35 AM (c2+vA)
These have certain well known tendencies when dealing with normal human body language.
We've seen enough of Florence to know that she is still a wolf.
Chandler rule seven: The solution must seem inevitable once revealed.
Late last night I saw Dr. Bowman, complete with sun glasses to help with eye contact, and thought 'Of freaking course'.
I had noted about all the jailers wearing visors, and I just now realized the purpose.
The distrust could be chalked up to a simple racism cognate, or that he has probably ripped off someone's face before. I think the latter is most correct.
Of course they want to limit his contact with human society. He may not be safe around children. Of course his jailers view her and the robots through his lens.
People who can be engineers are capable, and the scientific and engineering training only makes them more so.
Florence is an engineer who is a credit to the profession.
This is an important part of her story, even if Bowman isn't a super villain.
Posted by: PatBuckman at February 28, 2014 07:34 AM (+LcKg)
7
Those visors are computer interfaces. Mr. Raibert wears one, too, and he doesn't have access to Dr. Bowman.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 28, 2014 07:40 AM (+rSRq)
8
Yes, I saw them using them for that. I recall that Raibert's was a different model, that showed the eyes.
The question I had was why every single one of the guards wore one, and always wore one?
Raibert took his off to sleep.
Note that the guards who were asleep either wore them asleep, or put a really high priority on wearing them.
Yes, I think one reason is to always keep connected to the security system. I think another is that they are social PPE.
I think the guards are physically scared of Bowman. Three out of four are big sturdy guys. Chimps are strong, perhaps Bowman could still take them one on one.
Posted by: PatBuckman at February 28, 2014 08:55 AM (+LcKg)
The most amazing event of my lifetime was the dissolution of the USSR. It's not something I thought I'd live to see, because I thought the only way the USSR would come to an end was in nuclear holocaust, which would happen to me in the US, too.
The idea that the USSR would simply collapse and vanish without causing a World War was a complete surprise.
(In case you're wondering, the second most amazing event of my lifetime was the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.)
I think the dissolution of the USSR was unexpected by nearly everyone, and once in a while I run into fiction in which it still exists. There's a USSR in Full Metal Panic, for instance, but that was nostalgia. Having a Soviet Union in the world made it a more interesting, albeit dangerous, place. FMP was written long after 1991.
I occasionally have an urge to read a book I used to own, and if it's offered for Kindle I will buy it. I just did that a couple of days ago with the so-called Giant's trilogy by Hogan: Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giant's Star. I'm reading the third one now and it has an active USSR in it. (It was written in 1981.)
He doesn't assume political stasis; he also includes a "United States of Europe". But, like almost everyone else, he assumes the permanance of the USSR. Which, of course, no longer exists.
There's a lot of that in science fiction. In the movie 2001, the shuttle that Dr. Floyd is on to go to the space station belongs to Eastern Airlines. Which no longer exists; it was one of the victims of deregulation. (Frank Lorenzo bought it and looted it in 1991.) (Oops, no, it was PanAm, which also died in 1991 because of deregulation.)
And, of course, any picture of Manhattan which includes the WTC always brings a twinge.
I suppose it's trite to say, but things change. And no one can predict which things will change. Even mountains change.
1
In the movie 2001, the shuttle that Dr. Floyd is on to go to the space
station belongs to Eastern Airlines. Which no longer exists; it was one
of the victims of deregulation.
The Space Clipper Orion was flown by PanAm in the movie, which doesn't invalidate your comment one whit.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 14, 2014 05:51 PM (/hR8t)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 14, 2014 06:10 PM (+rSRq)
4
One of the great moments of my movie-viewing life was when I got to see 2001 in all its glory on a full-sized movie screen, and me with the Golden Seat.
The PanAm scene still brings shivers to this day... particularly now that I know just how freakin' hard it is to do that sort of thing in real life with how orbital mechanics work.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 14, 2014 09:48 PM (/hR8t)
5
In fairness to Hogan, he did have aliens behind the Soviet Union, so it probably would have collapsed after the third book. Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage II, written in 1987, took place in the mid to late 21st century, but the Soviet Union is still strong.
Posted by: muon at February 15, 2014 07:23 AM (jFJid)
6
FMP's USSR is a deliberate anachronism. China is also in the middle of a 5-way civil war. It turns out these are all side effects of the experiment that created the Whispered.
Posted by: ubu at February 15, 2014 04:37 PM (GfCSm)
I'm no longer worried about Florence as of today's strip in Freefall.
But I have a prediction for what's coming next:
The guards at the complex seem pretty certain that they have Dr. Bowman under control. I think they're probably wrong. He could escape from the compound any time he wanted to, but so far he's never had anywhere he could go safely.
He's aware of what's going on, and now that Florence is in the capture drone, Dr. Bowman is going to take it over and bring her to himself. And when Sam shows up in his ship, Dr. Bowman will take that opportunity to escape.
As yet unexplained is just why he's being kept in a maximum security prison.
1
Regarding the main "guest" at the Polar outpost:
Scenario: You are part of small, interstellar colony attempting to terraform an alien world. You plan depends on a robot-building factory, but it inexplicably crashes in the ocean, and the parts which are not destroyed by flooding catch fire. A mad scientist who happens be in your expedition comes to rescue with new, improved self-aware robots. These robots created by said mad scientist now out-number the human colonists by one or two orders of magnitude.
Based on several centuries of popular fiction, locking up the mad scientist is the only logical course of action...
Posted by: Siergen at February 13, 2014 07:43 PM (c2+vA)
I imagine the fans in Denver are all screaming mad about now.
I'm "watching" the game via a Flash program on the NFL web site. So I see the results of each play, but I get no commentary -- and no advertisements. I tuned in just before the end of the first quarter, and I gotta say I'm not impressed.
How long before Denver's coach replaces Manning?
Seattle has scored four times so far, and Denver is completely shut out. They even lost a safety, which is embarassing.
UPDATE: Clown noses and big floppy shoes, too. After that interception they must really be screaming in Denver.
UPDATE: By the way, what was the Vegas point spread on the game?
UPDATE: And greasepaint! I wonder if Denver will even score in this game?
UPDATE: Actually, the Flash file does run an ad every once in a while. But it isn't the advertising overdose you get on TV.
UPDATE: Well, at least they're not going to be shut out. Denver has saved itself from complete humiliation.
Never. He's arguably the greatest QB in history, had statistically the best season ever this year, and won his fifth MVP in the process. Replacing him with Brock Osweiler would be like pulling... well, YOU from blogging and replacing you with a lemur.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 02, 2014 05:52 PM (OcKnz)
While I thought Seattle would win (always go with the best defense in the NFL when it's in the Superb Owl), I figured it'd be a lot (a LOT) closer than the final result, like 24-21, in that ballpark.
Plus 10 points for picking the winner. Minus several thousand points for the score.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 02, 2014 08:15 PM (OcKnz)
When you look back at the history of the Super Bowl, the playoffs don't turn out to be a very good way to pick the teams because more often than not the game is a romp, with one team pretty much overwhelming the other.
Actual Super Bowls where the teams are closely matched and the result isn't certain until the very last minute are really rare.
It's also rare, though not as much so, for the game to be a slaughter like today. But usually they aren't very close.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 02, 2014 10:29 PM (+rSRq)
Sometimes a story cannot be told without a large cast of speaking parts. That's particularly common in sports stories. I think there are basically only three ways to deal with that, each of which has pitfalls.
First, you can ignore most of them most of the time. If they're opponents the risk is that they become cannon-fodder, redshirts, doomed to die (or lose) without the audience feeling anything for them. What's worse, it can make the victory by the good guys seem cheap and unimportant.
Second, you can try to give a lot of them back stories and screen time. That's what Saki did, and it fell for a different trap: you can drown in backstory. Saki spent an enormous amount of time telling backstory for opponents during the tournament, which dragged down the story telling into the mud. When I first watched it, one episode per week, I eventually gave up and stopped, waiting until the whole show was done before catching up. And when I rewatch it, I do a lot of skipping.
Third, you can split the difference: make them have characters but not very substantial ones. The drawback here is that it can make them seem like "cardboard cutouts" -- and the best way to handle that is to laugh at it. That's what they did in Girls und Panzer, and we got that cue when all the tanks got painted strange colors. "This is not a deadly serious show, folks. Go with it, have fun, because we in the production staff are having fun.
Plus, they effectively treated each tank crew at Ooarai as a single character most of the time. So Hippo team was "the history club" and all of them were into history. Duck was "the volleyball girls". Anteater was "the gamer girls". Rabbit was "the first year girls". Turtle was "the student council". Leopon was "the wrench wenches". Occasionally individual characters from one team or another would have a special role (i.e. Rommel doing a scouting mission with Yukari during the Pravda battle). And they "hung a lampshade on it" with Mallard, the discipline committee. All three girls look exactly the same except for the length of their hair, and they all had the same seiyuu. None of which was accidental; the director is goosing the audience in the ribs with it.
The big advantage of the third way is that it avoids the problems of the other two. The characters don't become redshirts, and they also don't bog down the story telling. The only characters we get backstory for are Miho, Yukari, Hana, and Mako. All we know about Saori's back story is that she's Mako's friend from way back.
Obviously there's no single best answer, but in GuP I think this one was the right choice. There was so much else they had to cover in 1 cour that they simply didn't have room for lots of backstory. And I think the story telling is paced well; it doesn't feel flabby, and there isn't anything I would consider filler, but it also doesn't feel rushed.
1
I was wondering about that history girl with the headband whose left eye is always closed (Saemonza). Does she have an injury or is she just constantly winking? She seemed to open it in OVA 2 when she yelled at her fellow Hippo teammates for sitting wrong.
Posted by: muon at January 29, 2014 06:40 AM (jFJid)
Notice the strange thing she wears that looks a bit like a bra, but only covers one breast? That's called a muneate, an it's protection worn by women archers to protect their breasts from the bowstring. I would guess she only uses one eye because it's easier to aim.
The muneate covers her right breast, which means she's right-handed, and it's her right eye that's open. That's consistent.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 29, 2014 08:40 AM (+rSRq)
3
By the way, she's also the gunner for Hippo, and the gunner uses one eye to aim.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 29, 2014 10:09 AM (+rSRq)
4
A while ago I studied the way muneate is hung and what side archers use, and found no connection whatsoever. I found pictures of all 4 permutations, both in anime and IRL.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at January 29, 2014 11:22 AM (RqRa5)
5
I was wondering if she was an expy of Date Masamune, but he was missing his left eye. Maybe she got into Japanese history because she identified with him. I don't know if this official art is accurate, but she appears left-handed and her eyelid is more droopy as opposed to Erwin and Caesar, who is firing while aiming with one eye. I suppose a manga version can be used to supply back story for some of the characters.
Speaking of muneate, the shipgirls of the standard aircraft carriers in KanColle are depicted as archers with most wearing it.
How well do you think Mouretsu Pirates handled its large cast?
Posted by: muon at January 30, 2014 04:05 AM (jFJid)
6
I thought it was excellent. But it was also possible for them to roll out their cast in three waves: one at the beginning (yacht club and school), one starting about ep 6 (Bentenmaru), and one in the second half (Kenjirou, Show, and the other pirate captains). That helped a lot.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 30, 2014 06:25 AM (+rSRq)
Wil Wheaton has spent 25 years trying to escape from the tragedy known as "Wesley". He still acts, but his main thing these days is to be a columnist and writer.
He also has a TV show about table-top games called... "Tabletop". Since I don't own a TV, I don't know anything more about it than that. (Like, what cable channel does it run on?)
John Kovalic is a cartoonist and illustrator, and a friend of Wheaton's from way back. Yesterday Kovalic was a guest on the show.
Kovalic's main title is "Dork Tower" and he posted three cartoons about it: onetwothree
And that particular episode of the show was put on YouTube. I just watched it, and it was a lot of fun. It's worth a half hour.
And... what Kovalic's cartoon characters say about Anne Wheaton is absolutely true. She's stunning. And Wil Wheaton is a very lucky man. (He must be doing something right; they've been married 14 years.)
UPDATE: Wikipedia says that TableTop is a webcast. I wonder where the money comes from? It's not cheap to put together a show like that. Do they get a cut of the YouTube advertising?
That's interesting. What the web did to newpapers and magazines, now it's about to start doing to cable TV.
"Broadcasting" on YouTube has some real advantages compared to cable. For one thing you're not stuck with a hard-and-fast length you have to fit into. For another things, FCC censorship rules don't apply.
It's just a trickle right now, but eventually it'll be a flood.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 25, 2014 10:46 AM (+rSRq)
Webcasting/webstreaming is the way of the future, but I have my doubts about Youtube as the platform for it (Primarily due to the management/ownership of Youtube, i.e. Google.).
Posted by: cxt217 at January 25, 2014 10:50 AM (XQR7Z)
I think YouTube is going to be the foundation of this, just as Blogger was the foundation of blogging.
Blogger made it easy for people to get into blogging, and the number of blogs exploded as a result. (Of course, Sturgeon's Law was an underestimate when it came to this.)
But Blogger doesn't dominate blogging and YouTube won't dominate webcasting either. They're both convenient and cheap but limited in various ways, and ultimately unsatisfying. Blogger was training wheels for a blogger, and YouTube will be the same for webcasters.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 25, 2014 11:07 AM (+rSRq)
6
I think some of his popularity in tabletop games comes from the
Acquisitions Incorporated D&D games held at PAX each year. The
videos are all on youtube, and have some rather hilarious, if raunchy,
moments. One recurring theme is Wheaton's ongoing feud with acid traps.
I
read somewhere recently (it might have been an Instalink) that a
growing amount of bandwidth is going to people watching other people
play games, whether console/PC or tabletop (either traditional or using
PC tools like VASSAL or Roll20). I'll readily admit to watching
playthroughs of games, particularly the movie-like ones (e.g., The Last
of Us) that I have neither the time, skills, or often the hardware to
play myself.
A heck of a lot of people are apparently watching
top MOBA players go at it, though, and that might just mainstream
e-sports once those viewers hit peak earnings age, much as the "Children
of the '80s" have apparently driven some of Hollywood's choices in
recent years (e.g., Transformers/GI JOE).
Posted by: BigD at January 25, 2014 12:40 PM (VKO9N)
7
Yeah, Webcasting ability was apparently recently added to the nVidia drivers package in some of the latest versions I've downloaded, as well as full screen capture.
Posted by: Mauser at January 25, 2014 01:32 PM (TJ7ih)
8
I'm gonna agree with BigD and admit to watching playthroughs of older games I no longer own or cannot play due to skill (in the video game arena.) In the case of some board games like Mage Knight, a good video playthrough helps in learning the game beyond the basic instructions. Box of Delights has shown me some strategies I don't think I would have ever thought of just playing on my own.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at January 26, 2014 08:52 AM (76G0j)
A lot of the dedicated streaming services like Twitch and UStream get much/most of their traffic from people broadcasting video game playthroughs. Tougher games, harder to find games (Like Panzer Dragoon Saga - most US Sega Saturn games, actually.), import games, and speed runs will always get an audience.
I have friends who stream games and it is nice being able to watch games that you will never play or own.
Posted by: cxt217 at January 26, 2014 06:28 PM (jvZKz)
While watching Girls und Panzer I've long wondered something: Does it make any difference which way the rifling turns? Rifling is a helix, and it's either clockwise or counter-clockwise. Does it matter which?
I though maybe it might matter depending on whether you were in the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere. You know, Coriolis effect, maybe, or something like that.
Well, if it matters, it probably doesn't matter much. There are a couple of closeup shots in it of gun barrels. The Panzer 4 is rifled counter-clockwise, and the Hetzer is rifled clockwise. And both guns came from the same manufacturer.
Is there really any reason to prefer one over the other?
1
After some reading, it has a minor effect. Though likely not enough over WW2-era battle tank distances. Something like the Atomic Launcher, however, would have taken it into effect.
Though modern tanks have gone to Smoothbores due to the ammunition types they use. As the cannon ammunition got longer & bigger, rifling simply doesn't add enough. Now they just stabilize the rounds in flight with fins.
Posted by: sqa at January 22, 2014 10:46 PM (WJILw)
2
It's probably a matter of convenience. I would expect right-hand threads because that is the primary direction of rotation on a metalworking lathe.
Posted by: Mauser at January 23, 2014 02:07 AM (TJ7ih)
3
sqa: It's more that rifling is actively harmful for the two major anti-tank types of rounds, and I'm pretty sure also for canister rounds, which are essentially big shotgun shells.
Sabot kinetic kill rounds fire a dart of tough metal with fins, as you note. That apparently does a better job of stabilization than spinning, and the spinning induced by rifling adsorbs quite a bit of energy, so you get better velocities and therefore penetration if you omit it.
HEAT rounds use shaped charges, and spinning disrupts the penetrating jet they produce.
One wonders why rifled tank canon lasted so long. In the West, in the late '50s the British developed the fantastic rifled L7 105mm canon which pretty much everyone adopted, and it e.g. provided a decisive advantage to the IDF in the "Dual for the Golan" in the 1973 Yom Kippur war (the battle I'm current closely studying, one of the greatest tank battle of history).
But by the time we fielded the first generation of the M1 Abrams, we were installing slip rings on the outside of our anti-tank rounds to negate the rifling effect. Then we and a few others adopted the smoothbore Rheinmetall 120 mm L/44, first produced in 1974.
Hmmm, per Wikipedia the Soviets introduced the first smoothbore tank cannon in 1961 with the T-62's 115mm U-5TS. The article on the canon said it was effective against Western tanks until the introduction of "third generation MBT's in the late '70s and early '80s".
Posted by: hga at January 23, 2014 07:49 AM (BfJzf)
One concern in choosing the rifling direction arises if the design has a gun barrel that threads into its receiver; the rifling direction should be chosen so that the countertorque generated by spinning the bullet up to speed should be in tightening direction of this threaded interface.
The M3 grease gun got this famously WRONG, so that over time the barrels would loosen from their receivers, and if you didn't check for this regularly then after a LOT of full-auto bursts you could spin the barrel off, which could get rather embarrassing to say the least.
Back in the USS Clueless days, I made a couple of posts about tank guns: onetwo
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 23, 2014 11:19 AM (+rSRq)
Hmmm, I never ran across those articles about tank guns. I would comment that the statements about why the Soviet tanks and equipment as designed as such are correct as far as they go, but are not complete, since there actually was a logical reason for this. I would wonder about saying the T-72 was a 'low-end' tank vis-Ã -vis the T-80, though, given their respective design histories.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at January 23, 2014 12:38 PM (e6S4X)
6@ hga: a "canon dual" sounds interesting. What is it, two string quartets on stage at the same time?
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 23, 2014 07:41 PM (UVcMa)
I don't know how many of you are regular readers of Freefall, but I know some of you are.
Yesterday I had a strange thought:
I had been assuming that Dr. Bowman was at that secret compound because he didn't like being disturbed, or maybe because he was working on something top secret. But it just occurred to me that maybe he's a prisoner there. In that case, I wonder if Florence is going to run into him, and maybe end up helping him escape?
1
I had gotten the impression recently from one of the pilots that brought Florence to the compound that he was, in fact, under guard. I'd have to go back and trawl the archives to find what it was, though.
Posted by: RickC at December 22, 2013 05:49 PM (swpgw)
I don't see many other explanations for
all the security around the compound.
As I see it the options are
a) He is confined against his will b) He is working on something very dangerous c) Him being kept isolated from things is a condition of him being able to come to planet.
It makes perfect sense why.
Kornada shows some of the crud that can be done by abusing exploits in Bowman architecture brains. What little we know of Bowman's character implies he wouldn't be trusted, if any should be trusted.
The security couple are another clue. Fresh immigrants, and kept isolated from the main population. Clippy may be the first one of these robots that they've seen. That also seems like a security measure that someone sees a compelling need for.
Posted by: PatBuckman at December 22, 2013 11:13 PM (+LcKg)
I personally wondered what might happen if it turned out Dr. Bowman
looked almost exactly like Mr. Koronada, as part of an incredibly complicated Batman Gambit on Bowman's part. If Bowman could pull strings to put Florence on Jean, he could probably do the same to put an incompetent body double in exactly the position he's in and keep him there long enough to screw everything up. Florence, once inserted into the Bowman compound, would eventually see Bowman on one of the security feeds and assume he's Koronada, almost certainly begin stalking him, and only realize he isn't Koronada when she gets close enough to smell him.
But that's all just crazy speculation on my part, really.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian at December 23, 2013 06:28 AM (4njWT)
But... I think it likely that
Dr. Bowman had put a backdoor in the Bowman Architecture. Once he meets up with Florence, he'll have some noise, or maybe a verbal command (but only in his own voice) which releases all her safeguards, and puts her under his direct control. I keep wondering when that factory override (the smell that cancels all existing orders) is going to come back into the story, and I think that Sam is going to use it eventually to free Florence either from orders given her by Dr. Bowman, or from orders given to her by the guards.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 23, 2013 06:57 AM (+rSRq)
6
It's pretty certain that
some sort of failsafe would be installed in Florence's brain, but I'd be surprised if Dr. Bowman actually used it. The thing I like most about Freefall is that the main protagonist is clearly an engineer, and all the ways she thinks like an engineer are relevant to the story. Dr. Bowman is being set up as an engineer that thinks several levels beyond even Florence, and it's hard to think of that being an antagonistic role in the series, much like Mr. Raibert isn't really in an antagonistic role; regardless of how creepy his statements and thoughts are, he has never used any direct orders on Florence, let alone any failsafes, no matter how tired he got.
Still,
it's probably an appropriate time, now that we've been fully introduced to the robotic equivalent of General Zod, to be introduced to the first truly evil engineer in the series, and shown just how bad such a person can really be. While that may be the new direction Mr. Stanley's going in, I still hope Bowman turns out to actually just be a brilliant person in a terrible position, trying to explore an unexplored field of AI and hitting every landmine along the way, only able to take basic common sense steps to mitigate the damage he causes.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian at December 23, 2013 11:38 AM (4njWT)
Given how we've seen order priorities work, Bowman might not need a back door. He might have the highest priority. As for the security couple, I think at the moment Flo thinks they have lower authority than the vice mayor.
Tatterdemalian,
Again, I dunno.
We've been given hints that Bowman has character issues. I suspect that he is at least a little uncaring of some of the ramifications of his work. I think that if Bowman were entirely on top of things, entirely sound of judgement, and entirely moral, we would not be in this situation.
We've had a large cast of heroes tackling the Kornada situation. Chief, Max, Bill, Sam, Flo, Blunt, and Edge. Some of them are fairly sketchy in various ways, but they solved the problem by tackling the bits that were a problem for them.
Kornada is scum who wouldn't have gotten near that level of stuff if he were trying to exploit humans instead of robots. Clippy was following orders. He was made vulnerable to and exploited by Kornada because of inherent flaws in EU. EU is a human organization, a busy one, and hence didn't have adequate safeguards on what trusted humans could do with the robots, as Bowman designed them.
I think Bowman may be more of a scientist than an engineer. I don't know that he is "my mother's maiden name was Kihara" evil, but I don't think he is going to fix things on his own once he is made aware of them.
Posted by: PatBuckman at December 23, 2013 12:36 PM (+LcKg)
8
Regarding the Mayor's assistant,
Arguably she's been operating under his direct order all this time, which means despite her concerns about working around her safeguards, she isn't really. He told her to do whatever she thought she needed to in order to protect the robots, and that's quite a blank check. And, as Pat says, he's right up there in the hierarchy. Only the mayor, and possible Mr. Raibert, rank him.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 23, 2013 12:42 PM (+rSRq)
9The exact wording was: "Do whatever you think is necessary to save the robots." That covers a lot of territory...
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 23, 2013 12:59 PM (+rSRq)
I've never liked the concept of engineers being in an adversarial role with scientists, but given the various other jokes made about people in various occupations, I suppose that's pretty likely to be where the series is going... "engineers good, scientists bad." The series has seemed pretty realistic about how the most successful people keep turning out to be the ones who use planning and risk mitigation rather than brute force or blind faith, and it would be pretty disappointing to have a huge lead-in to Dr. Bowman's introduction only to reveal that he's some exported clone of a throwaway gag villain from "Girl Genius."
Posted by: Tatterdemalian at December 23, 2013 01:25 PM (4njWT)
11
Shopping for orders may be seen as working around a safeguard. I think her actions are correct, and in service to the ends of true engineering, among other things.
Tat, mostly an aside
Engineers and scientists are different. Strictly speaking, each practices a problem solving system that is slightly different, each with a history dating back perhaps some thousands of years.
These days, the issue is a little confused by the fact that we can train a person in both fairly easily and cheaply, which is what we tend to do with engineers. Flo here uses both.
What Bowman did involved a lot of engineering work, and science. A pure scientist without enough engineering background can stereotypically make something that works, but fail to anticipate how it will be used enough to disaster proof it to standard.
The thing in Railgun about how that one family is supernaturally predisposed to be evil and use science seems entirely unlike Freefall.
Posted by: PatBuckman at December 23, 2013 04:22 PM (+LcKg)
So I'm giving it a try, watching the race on webcast. At the beginning I was a bit worried because it looked like they were overloaded and all I could get was a spinning "buffering" symbol.
But now it's running OK.
Adrian Sutil crashed out on lap 2, and that brought out the pace car. It's obviously necessary. But it's a bit like basketball where a penalty brings all the action to a stop. And NBC takes the opportunity for an ad break.
This is the first television I've watched in several years. Gad, there sure are a bunch of ads. I'm sure it's going to drive me crazy before it's all over.
UPDATE: My solution to ad breaks was going to be to come here and write some more. Only last time, all I got from mee.nu was Error 500. Rats.
I have never heard anyone pronounce these names before. I always thought that "Sutil" was pronounced SOOTull but it's actually sooTEEL.
Turn 1 on this track is awesome. I can see how the hill affects the drivers, and it's quite an effect.
DRS (Drag Reduction System) is a hack. When you go through the "detection zone", if you're within one second of the guy in front of you, then your DRS is enabled, and you get to go faster on the next straight stretch.
UPDATE: This is more interesting to watch than I thought it would be. The announcers are critical to that; they're really awesomely good.
They made an interesting point earlier: because of the "no refueling" rule, the cars start with enough fuel to finish the race. They burn about a gallon per lap, and as the race goes on the cars get lighter, and thus faster.
Continuing about the DRS: You get to go faster, but the guy in front of you probably doesn't.
It's pretty much a hack to permit lots of passes. If it was fair, everyone would get drag reduction. But I guess the race would be less fun in that case.
I'm not so sure about that. Most of the passes in this race have been in the twisty bits, where DRS isn't enabled.
Vettel is owning the race again, as expected. But the positions behind him are certainly in contention. I think no one is even thinking of trying to win against him, so the real question is who comes in second?
UPDATE: "Fox" means "pit stop". (For fighter pilots, "fox" means "fire a missile".)
UPDATE: McLaren is having another miserable day. The announce team mentioned something I hadn't noticed: McLaren hasn't had a single podium this year. (How the mighty have fallen...)
Another name: Kovaleinen is KO-vull-LIE-nen. I honestly didn't have any idea how his name was pronounced.
I am amazed watching the pit stops. Even the ones the announce team call "slow" sure end up being blazing fast to my eyes. Those guys must spend ridiculous amounts of time practicing.
UPDATE: The place where Sutil crashed looks a bit scary. He wasn't really in much danger; his speed was low when he hit. But he hit the wall about 10 feet to the right of a blunt face. Had he been 10 feet to the left, the wall would have been square in front of him, with no place to deflect off to the side.
Lap 34, and Vettel has already pitted, and he's got a 10 second lead.
What I don't know about this stuff; but to my uneducated eye, this is a really good track.
And I think I just saw the "pass of the race", Bottas passing Gutierrez.
UPDATE: Advertisement: Agent Smith is taking over our healthcare system. Explains a lot, doesn't it?
UPDATE: Part of the advertising time is reserved for local stations. When we hit one of those, the webcast just says "Coverage will return shortly." You'd think they'd sell "web-only" ad slots, but they didn't.
Most of the communications between the pits and drivers is in English, even when the driver is not a native English speaker.
But they talk to Alonso in Spanish.
UPDATE: Turn 1 seems to be the preferred place on the track for passing. Which means DRS is important.
I still think it's a hack.
UPDATE: When the on-car cameras pick up some bugs, they have something that slides down and gives you a clear view. I wonder how they do that?
UPDATE: Much to no one's surprise, Vettel wins another one. Apparently this sets a record of "most consecutive wins in a single season."
This seems to be a very safe track. Sutil's crash was the only one, and it wasn't all that violent. Someone did something strange to Gutierrez in the final lap, but all it did was shove him into the grass, after which he drove back onto the track and finished the race.
It also seems to be a good racing track. DRS notwithstanding, the turn 1-2 complex had some good stuff going on. There was one time when someone passed Alonso in turn 1, and he took the position back in turn 2. Part of why that seems possible is that the track is nicely wide the whole distance, and in a couple of places it's even wider. As a result, cars can drive side-by-side without too much problems. On some of the street circuits (Monaco) that simply isn't possible.
As the race goes on, you can see the "preferred line" develop because of wear on the pavement and rubber being laid down. The preferred line looks shiny and bright. But there was one place where the preferred line changed as the race went on. No one was driving on the shiny part. I think that must have been because the cars were lighter, due to fuel consumption.
UPDATE: I thought I would get bored and eventually stop watching, but that was actually pretty cool.
UPDATE: Vettel burned some circles out past the edge of turn 1. He did that last time, too, and they hit him with a fine. I wonder if he'll be fined again?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 17, 2013 01:00 PM (+rSRq)
3
Because you've done a better job with this post than I've done all season?
Oh, and it's Italian, not Spanish, that Ferrari was speaking to HWMNBN. They aren't supposed to do that, but it's Ferrari: they've got their own set of rules.
Also: I call them the "Legendary Announce Team" for a reason. They really are just that good.
Posted by: Wonderduck at November 17, 2013 01:14 PM (Izt1u)
4
Silly question time: does Ferrari really get to flout the rules, doing things that would get penalties assigned to other teams?
Posted by: metaphysician at November 17, 2013 06:44 PM (3GCAl)
5
My engineering bet is that camera has a spool of transparent film in front, somewhat similar to the way old 35-mm cameras worked, only with electric motor instead of a lever.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 17, 2013 08:54 PM (RqRa5)
6
I think you must be right; that's what occurred to me, too. It's pretty elaborate, but I bet it didn't take long for them to figure out that they needed a solution for the problem.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 17, 2013 09:02 PM (+rSRq)
Silly question time: does Ferrari really get to flout the rules, doing things that would get penalties assigned to other teams?
There have been times when it seemed as if there were two rulebooks, one for Ferrarri and one for everyone else.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 17, 2013 09:03 PM (+rSRq)
8
What's the difference between DRS and plain old drafting?
Racing sports have been using cameras with rotating plexiglass(?) shields for a while, now. The shield periodically rotates, presenting a clear surface. Presumably, there's some sort of cleaning system in the back of the camera apparatus, but I have seen "new" sections come around that contained smudges or smears before.
Posted by: Big_D at November 17, 2013 09:33 PM (VKO9N)
What DRS does is open a hole in the middle of the rear wing, decreasing drag. The announce team said it was good for about 10 MPH increase in speed.
And it applies no matter where the car is, unlike drafting which only works if you're in a certain spot relative to the other car.
It also decreases down force, but the hole is automatically closed before you reach the turn at the end of the straight stretch.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 17, 2013 09:50 PM (+rSRq)
10
I was told that NASCAR-style drafting doesn't really work in F1, because the cars' massive wings leave "dirty air" behind them, which increases aerodynamic drag on the trailing car, making it basically impossible to close the distance enough to get into a sweet spot.
Aircraft and birds also leave dirty air behind themselves, which is why aircraft and birds in formation fly in echelon, not in column. Race cars can't really draft in echelon because of the necessity of turning frequently.
Posted by: Boviate at November 17, 2013 10:03 PM (CeQ+R)
11
Pete is correct to the best of my knowledge. I first saw something like that watching indy races when onboard cameras were pretty new. It's a roll of thin cellophane in front of the camera, and they just have enough of it to last the length of the race, no cleaning involved.
Posted by: Mauser at November 17, 2013 11:00 PM (TJ7ih)
12
Are there any good F1 animes, or racing animes in general?
Posted by: muon at November 18, 2013 01:56 AM (jFJid)
13
Not F1 as such, but there are shows about racing. I have no idea how good they are; never watched any of them.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 18, 2013 06:34 AM (+rSRq)
14Speed Racer started airing in 1965, so it is downright ancient in art, animation, and storytelling.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 18, 2013 09:07 AM (RqRa5)
15
Sorry about those error 500s, you probably caught me right when I was deploying the new version of Minx.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 18, 2013 12:21 PM (PiXy!)
In NASCAR, your cars suffer from drag, but don't get a whole ton of downforce from their bodies (mostly compensated for by the turns being gradual and banked heavily). So running behind someone, you're in the disrupted airflow, which reduces drag, even if you're both in a turn.
In F1, you have drag, but a much larger amount of the drag is converted to downforce. (The joke is that an F1 car has so much downforce that if you got it up on the ceiling somehow, it could stick there from downforce alone; it's not QUITE true, but pretty close.) This downforce is great in the turns but slows you down a good bit on the straight. If you're behind someone, all that disrupted, "dirty" air is giving you less drag, and also not pushing down on your wings properly, reducing the amount of downforce. So yeah, you go faster.
But then you get to the corner... uh oh. Now you need all that downforce to help increase your grip, because you've got a motherlode of inertia going the wrong way. And if you're right behind someone, you're in that dirty air, and the air's not pushing cleanly on all your aero elements, and you don't have that downforce when you most need it. You compensate by relying more on the grip in the tires (which degrades them at a faster rate) or by slowing down (guess you ain't passing that guy in front of you!)
DRS ("Drag" Reduction System, right?) is a hack intended to counteract the immense problem of trying to pass an F1 car on a twisty track. Passing without it means you either have to rely on the other guy making a mistake, or you have a massive performance advantage...
And this is why Duck is awesome, because a couple of years ago I didn't know any of this stuff. ;p
F1 in anime... not so much, though Schumacher's Chin did show up for a guest appearance in Yakitate... Good Smile did make a Nendroid of Kobayashi a couple years ago, though.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at November 18, 2013 05:34 PM (pWQz4)
18
It's kind of a shame, because Suzuka is one of the best courses on the circuit.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 18, 2013 05:48 PM (+rSRq)
19
I think a lot of the reason racing doesn't show up in Anime simply comes down to a lack of racing culture in Japan. When not a lot of people drive, it's hard to get people thinking about racing.
Compare that to the Nordics, who get their kids racing somewhere after they figure out how to ride a bicycle. Population Density will do that to a culture.
Posted by: sqa at November 18, 2013 09:06 PM (rdcLU)
20
Japanese GP pulls about 100,000 people on the race day, which is in line with what F1 can do. China was at 100k in 2012 too, Korea at 80k.
Also, guys... Initial D.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 18, 2013 10:03 PM (RqRa5)
21
Ohio State University's stadium holds 102k and is filled every game each year. 100k at a Race that happens once per year isn't too impressive.
And, yes, while I am an Initial D fan, it's a good series that is kind of its own thing. But their Car Culture is "kei cars" more than anything else. And that's not much of a culture.
Posted by: sqa at November 18, 2013 10:51 PM (rdcLU)
22
The only one I've seen is the REDLINE movie (Speed Racer on crack). Future CPX Cyber Formula is about futuristic Formula racing. Would the DRS count as a computer support system?
Posted by: muon at November 19, 2013 03:01 AM (jFJid)
23
There was Motorcycle Racing of a sort in Rideback. However towards the end it violates the den Beste rule.
(The basic plot is there are these motorcycles that transform into a two-wheeled side-by side form, like a cross between a segway and a mech, with the rider position high and towards the rear, so you're riding on it's back, get it? Promising ballerina whose career was ended by a broken ankle has a sense of balance that makes her a natural rider even with the stability control system off. She enters some races and does well. Meanwhile, Totalitarian Government is taking over, and her club takes the position that SkateboardingRidebacking is not a crime, and she gets involved in a revolution.)
Posted by: Mauser at November 19, 2013 04:06 AM (TJ7ih)
