November 5th, 2007
Like the Death Star
Remember, if you ever design something, to include plans for the weak spot… the unnecessary vulnerable part that although of no apparent function, renders everything useless when only slightly bothered.
The appendix, for example.
In other news, your fellow reader and webcomic creator T Campbell has a new site about webcomics… webcomics.com.
My favourite part is the MySpeech bit, give it a go.
Philip J Schadenfreude on
As an engineer (wannabe), I design weak spots into everything, tho I really must start actually using logic and reason for deciding where to put them.
The function of a well designed weak spot is to fail before anything else does. This is either to protect everything else, or so that there will be a predictable failure pattern.
A weak spot that destroys Earth is a bit of a poor design, but then again, I am getting used to the other design failures
That would be an interesting superpower: the ability to cause peoples’ appendixes (appendices?) to spontaneously burst.
You know, I actually thought that Adam was referring to the appendix found in books.
I should think literally for once and not laterally.
Or just drink more coffee.
TGJB – Are you the chef at my work canteen? If not, you should really get together…
Ben – Literal thinking, for once, just to mix it up. Thousgh I would also argue that it is the weak spot in a book too.
Isn’t it astounding, how the Death Star has only the one weak spot, yet the Star Wars Saga has thousands?
(More astounding that I love it anyway, even whilst poking fun at the cheesy dialogue and blatant plot holes.)
Ah, Star Wars. While I had gout after the AT, and I couldn’t move, I rented all six Star Wars movies and watched them in order (I II III IV V VI), rather than chronologically. The jump back in time was astounding, not because the special effects were more primitive but because the story in the older ones was so much more straight forward, and they’re so much shorter. It’s a neat experiment, I recommend for any Star Wars buff.
Actually if you assume that the Death Star was rebuilt from the same blueprints merely eliminating the original weak spot then it must have had at least two weak spots because they blew it up in a different way in Return of the Jedi.
What makes you sure the strongest
part isn’t also the most vulnerable?
Recovery becomes impossible…