On Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 09:42:00AM -0800, Chris Warner wrote:
> With an automated timing and scoring we could potentially post to the web
> live, as it happens.
So what? All the people who care are still at the event.
> The timing and scoring could be setup to post times live. We would need a
> CRT or flat screen display for the current run group, then when the run
> group is finished, the results could be printed out and posted. No need for
> a time poster here. It would be really neat if we could use a touch screen
> system here because then we could allow the competitors to search and
> compare their times to their friends who may or may not be in the same run
> group. It is nothing that we can't do now, but we're just changing the
> presentaion of the results.
Yay! More hardware! More stuff to power, and more stuff to break.
This is the kind of thinking that keeps my company in business.
Spending a thousand bucks to maintain the level of functionality that
we currently have.
> True, but since most of our members live and work in proxcimity to silicon
> valley, I don't think it would be a problem finding a specialist.
You're sure not going to recruit me to fix someone else's broken
software! Maybe some people enjoy working around bugs in someone
else's software (there are lots of Windows users, for example). Can I
see a show of hands for people who want to become specialists in
someone else's fully automated registration, timing, scoring, and
posting system? How many people have even bothered to learn all there
is to know about the timer?
> Touch screens are great for this. I worked for an company that developed a
> coin-operated bar top machine, designed to take the abuses of drunken
> patrones and lots of spilled beer. I think I have a few ideas to get around
> this problem. If these technically challenged competitors can use a web
> browser, then they could use our program.
Yay, more specialized hardware! Who is paying for this stuff? This
is a club, not an internet startup. If the club has thousands to blow
on gimmicks, I vote for free karting sessions at Speedring instead!
There are some tasks for which computers can reduce the work
required compared to doing it by hand. There are tasks for which it
takes more time to develop the software to do the job than it takes to
do the job by hand. And then there are tasks for which it's more of a
pain in the butt to force the computer to do the job than to do it by
hand, even when you already have the software. This really sounds
like the last category, even assuming that we get the software written
for free by unemployed computer geeks (perhaps especially if the
software is written by unemployed computer geeks).
One thing that hasn't been addressed is that the paper system provides
a way to backtrack and figure out what happened if a mistake is
discovered afterwards. Can that be true of the computer-based system?
Yes. Will it? That depends on how it's implemented.
--
john@idsfa.net John Stimson
http://www.idsfa.net/~john/ HMC Physics '94
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