[TML] jump weapons

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 8/10/08 4:01 AM, "Grimmund" <grimmund at gmail.com> wrote:

> Normally, a manufacterer build things to for a customer's order builds
> them to customer specification.
> 
> You may engineer yourself a little margin on *meeting* that
> specification.  If the customer specs something to 2g, you might build
> it to 2.02g, maybe 2.05g.  You certainly wouldn't overbuild it by much
> more than that; it wouldn't be cost effective for *you*.

You are confusing the roles of manufacturer, engineer, and customer.  Any 2
or 3 of those may be the same person/company, or not.

Certainly, a manufacturer builds to meet the spec.  Even there, you have to
work a little over the spec.  Due to random variations, if your process
averages being right on X, then 50% of items will be below.  If the spec is
an absolute minimum, then you must work to at least 3 sigmas over it,
preferable 6.

Likewise, an architect/engineer becomes know by the quality of his work.
The good ones refuse to design things that are barely functional.  The bad
ones get a reputation for badness, and lose a lot of business opportunities.
Do *you* want to trust your interstellar shipping company to a known hack?

But there are also legal requirements.  If the customer asks an architect to
design a building that won't stand up to a minor earthquake and
local/state/federal code requires it to, you inform the customer.  If he
insists, you turn down the job, and likely inform appropriate authorities.

> If the customer doesn't expect to *need* it, they aren't going to want
> to *pay* for it.

No driver "expects to need" his seatbelt.  Yet they are required in all new
cars.