Engineering Shortcomings Thread

[3WE]

Unfortunately, things break. Where should we focus our attention to improve the world?

I’m sure we can come up with additional items.

[Not_Karl]

The Squid are behind everything that's designed to did died us, so they are the obvious choice.

[elaw]

(Runs around room, agitated and waving hands) WHAT? I CAN"T SELECT JUST ONE!!!

[elaw]

On-topic sort of... I was talking to my wife the other day about the space program, specifically the 1950s-1960s part of it.

I feel that one part of that program that doesn't get much credit is it proved that things can be made really farkin' reliable when we want to.

Prior to that if your car didn't start sometimes, or the drawbridge got stuck sometimes, or your stove wouldn't light sometimes, it was considered normal... stuff sometimes just doesn't work right.

Then we got Apollo 11 where every. single. thing. worked as it was supposed to (under extremely difficult circumstances), and we sent three fragile humans to the moon and brought them back safely. Okay there was probably something that didn't work perfectly, but all the important things did. Then we did the same thing 6 more times, and only once was there a significant failure.

And now I sit here next to a computer with what, probably 1 billion transistors in it? And they all work properly all the time... except when software tell them not to.

[Not_Karl]

...and only once was there a significant failure.

And I blame Tom Hanks for that one.

And now I sit here next to a computer with what, probably 1 billion transistors in it? And they all work properly all the time... except when software tell them not to.

If your computer has a modern, powerful CPU, you might be several billions short. If it has a modern, powerful GPU or Crapple Silicon, you might be from tens to more than a hundred billion short. And yes, both their number and reliability is absolutely mind-blowing and obviously the work of a superior Squid race.

[elaw]

...and only once was there a significant failure.

And I blame Tom Hanks for that one.

I can't remember where I heard this but a funny story about that movie...

The people that made it were screening it to test audiences so they could make tweaks before it was widely released. The feedback they got was almost all positive, except for one person who didn't like it and wrote "Typical Hollywood 'feel good' ending... in real life, they all would have died."

[3WE]

The feedback they got was almost all positive, except for one person who didn't like it and wrote "Typical Hollywood 'feel good' ending... in real life, they all would have died."

1. Beautiful.

2. Sadly, the Space Shuttle didn’t perform as well.

3. Back on topic, I think maybe a good, FORTRAN-based operating system should maybe have been a choice.

4. Eric, yes, you can only pick one as we hell-better, ass-hat, everythingengineers have limited resources.