4 ms·

That's... wow that's a really naive idea of how engineering works. You think that you do a few sin's and cos's and then mistakes just can't happen? That stuff y

That's... wow that's a really naive idea of how engineering works. You think that you do a few sin's and cos's and then mistakes just can't happen? That stuff you did in middle-school? I guess civil engineering really needs you. Why are you referring to a singular "this guy"? I hope you understand that the design an construction of a skyscraper involves more than one person at every step. I'm not sure why you are floating the conspiracy theory stuff - I really hope that's some kind of straw-man you're trying to pull, because otherwise... seek help.

mikeash 13y ago
I never said mistakes can't happen. I said that this mistake is an elementary one that should not have happened. Some mistakes are complex and hard. This mistake was trivial. Doubly trivial in that the guy who made the mistake already did it at least once before. I am referring to a singular "this guy" because there's an architect, "this guy", who designed the building. He determined the shape. The shape caused the problem. Yes, there's an army of people involved in the details, but the shape was one guy. What "conspiracy theory stuff" are you talking about?
- notahacker 13y ago
  Most software bugs are, when described to the layman after the fact, pretty elementary, but at least structural engineers usually don't insist the software architect that wrote the initial specs for a project must have been stupid when the version the outsourced dev team releases crashes under certain input parameters.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    The software equivalent of this mistake would be spending millions of dollars building software targeting Linux when the customer needs to run it on Windows. It's not "certain input parameters", it's obvious environmental conditions that should have been considered at the outset. I would really like one of the naysayers in this thread to describe to me exactly how a mistake like this gets reasonably made. I keep getting replies saying that there are good reasons why something like this would happen, but nobody has actually given me one. There are no confounding factors in this case that invalidate the freshman physics calculation that tells you that this building design will melt things or light them on fire. There is no excuse for not doing said calculations when designing a curved glass building, especially when you already made the mistake on a previous building you designed. And there is no conceivable way you thought you mitigated the problem while actually failing to do so in a reasonable fashion.
    - notahacker 13y ago
      As another person with rather more knowledge of architectural design processes pointed out in great detail on this page, the group that designs the facade is not the same as the group that models its behaviour under certain conditions, which is not the same as the group that makes the final decision on the tinting of glass panels, which is not the group that erects it to surprisingly imprecise tolerances. We're not talking about something obvious like Linux vs Windows. We're talking about something which is superficially obvious like integers can exceed X digits ...where the actual integers are the product of a decidely non-obvious set of calculations intended to generate low values but affected by code several specialist teams have commit privileges to. We're talking about a very slight degree of concavity on part of a large facade focuses the sun's rays for two hours a day, two weeks a year provided the surface material is sufficiently reflective and London has less than its median 68% cloud cover for September. And we're also talking about a building that isn't finished yet: here's an architect's rendering of the offending facade that appears to have ridges the current sheer shiny wall doesn't http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=624&tbm=isch&tbnid=yQxqYzz5-rpkLM:&imgrefurl=http://www.emsuk.net/ems-70fenchurch-street&docid=uUk3AMxGa3IofM&imgurl=http://www.emsuk.net/Assets/image/walkie-talkie-building.jpg&w=634&h=569&ei=QssoUt_YOInO0AWI84DoBQ&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:6,s:0,i:104&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=185&tbnw=229&start=0&ndsp=10&tx=56&ty=49 http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&safe=off&client=firefox-... It's not like either glass facades with some degree of concavity are unusual or being singed by them is common. Unlike database errors those stupid developers keep coming up with. n.b I don't even like the building; it's fugly from where I'm sitting. I'm going sunbathing there tomorrow though.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Except it's not "non-obvious" at all, but highly obvious. The people who designed the facade are not the same group that models the behavior under certain conditions? Well, that's apparently stupid, and somebody in the first group should have said, hey, where does this thing focus sunlight? At some point, somebody drew a giant curved reflective surface and failed to consider what it would do to the sunlight. That is dumb. I don't see any way around that.
- jacobparker 13y ago
  Sigh. There is not one architect that designed the building (even if one gets his name on for publicity reasons - there is a team.) The architect is also only one part of the process - I sure hope you know that they don't actually implement their designs. The "conspiracy theory stuff" is the "But that's worse for him, because it means he knew what would happen and didn't care." part. That was an extremely ignorant comment to make. I'm happy that you think its a simple mistake, but you don't have the credentials to claim that. Middle school math doesn't cut it.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Do you have the credentials, or are you simply arguing on the same base I am?

mikeash 13y ago

I never said mistakes can't happen. I said that this mistake is an elementary one that should not have happened. Some mistakes are complex and hard. This mistake was trivial. Doubly trivial in that the guy who made the mistake already did it at least once before. I am referring to a singular "this guy" because there's an architect, "this guy", who designed the building. He determined the shape. The shape caused the problem. Yes, there's an army of people involved in the details, but the shape was one guy. What "conspiracy theory stuff" are you talking about?

notahacker 13y ago
Most software bugs are, when described to the layman after the fact, pretty elementary, but at least structural engineers usually don't insist the software architect that wrote the initial specs for a project must have been stupid when the version the outsourced dev team releases crashes under certain input parameters.
- mikeash 13y ago
  The software equivalent of this mistake would be spending millions of dollars building software targeting Linux when the customer needs to run it on Windows. It's not "certain input parameters", it's obvious environmental conditions that should have been considered at the outset. I would really like one of the naysayers in this thread to describe to me exactly how a mistake like this gets reasonably made. I keep getting replies saying that there are good reasons why something like this would happen, but nobody has actually given me one. There are no confounding factors in this case that invalidate the freshman physics calculation that tells you that this building design will melt things or light them on fire. There is no excuse for not doing said calculations when designing a curved glass building, especially when you already made the mistake on a previous building you designed. And there is no conceivable way you thought you mitigated the problem while actually failing to do so in a reasonable fashion.
  - notahacker 13y ago
    As another person with rather more knowledge of architectural design processes pointed out in great detail on this page, the group that designs the facade is not the same as the group that models its behaviour under certain conditions, which is not the same as the group that makes the final decision on the tinting of glass panels, which is not the group that erects it to surprisingly imprecise tolerances. We're not talking about something obvious like Linux vs Windows. We're talking about something which is superficially obvious like integers can exceed X digits ...where the actual integers are the product of a decidely non-obvious set of calculations intended to generate low values but affected by code several specialist teams have commit privileges to. We're talking about a very slight degree of concavity on part of a large facade focuses the sun's rays for two hours a day, two weeks a year provided the surface material is sufficiently reflective and London has less than its median 68% cloud cover for September. And we're also talking about a building that isn't finished yet: here's an architect's rendering of the offending facade that appears to have ridges the current sheer shiny wall doesn't http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=624&tbm=isch&tbnid=yQxqYzz5-rpkLM:&imgrefurl=http://www.emsuk.net/ems-70fenchurch-street&docid=uUk3AMxGa3IofM&imgurl=http://www.emsuk.net/Assets/image/walkie-talkie-building.jpg&w=634&h=569&ei=QssoUt_YOInO0AWI84DoBQ&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:6,s:0,i:104&iact=rc&page=1&tbnh=185&tbnw=229&start=0&ndsp=10&tx=56&ty=49 http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&safe=off&client=firefox-... It's not like either glass facades with some degree of concavity are unusual or being singed by them is common. Unlike database errors those stupid developers keep coming up with. n.b I don't even like the building; it's fugly from where I'm sitting. I'm going sunbathing there tomorrow though.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Except it's not "non-obvious" at all, but highly obvious. The people who designed the facade are not the same group that models the behavior under certain conditions? Well, that's apparently stupid, and somebody in the first group should have said, hey, where does this thing focus sunlight? At some point, somebody drew a giant curved reflective surface and failed to consider what it would do to the sunlight. That is dumb. I don't see any way around that.
jacobparker 13y ago
Sigh. There is not one architect that designed the building (even if one gets his name on for publicity reasons - there is a team.) The architect is also only one part of the process - I sure hope you know that they don't actually implement their designs. The "conspiracy theory stuff" is the "But that's worse for him, because it means he knew what would happen and didn't care." part. That was an extremely ignorant comment to make. I'm happy that you think its a simple mistake, but you don't have the credentials to claim that. Middle school math doesn't cut it.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Do you have the credentials, or are you simply arguing on the same base I am?