Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Johnson
Concerning the comment about the forest and the trees, I am not sure what Lil' Lavery is getting at.
Is it that the system worked (i.e. even with all the problems discovered, we had a season with a record number of competitions and and competitors)?
Is it that the system broke but is going to be fixed (i.e. There were problems but FIRST got to the bottom them)?
Is it that the system is broken (i.e. even among robots that make it to Einstein, a substantial proportion have major electrical/programming problems)?
Is it that the system is really broken (i.e. that the control system is a brittle mismash of marginally compatible subsystems that on its best day is can be in inadvertently brought to its knees by well intentioned programmers yet alone nefarious no-goodnicks)?
I can see a lot of forests and a lot of trees.
Joe J.
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Is all of the above okay? Cos the way I see it, there are four different systems. In terms of the goal of FRC, we're still doing well, if not better. That's what I call the Chairman's system. Also, the lengths FIRST went to after championships are quite impressive, in what I guess is the organization system. Then, we have the system comprised of the elements of game play, both on the field and in the pits, and all's that proves is how human we are. The Astros sucked once they got to the World Series in 2004, but nobody says that the system is broken (well, at least not for teams sucking at that high a level). Finally, there's the robot connection system, which is the only broken system out of the group. And that's the forest Lil Lav is talking about, with the tree being our unknown attacker. It's not the guy's intentions; it's his actions and how repeatable they might be, how much further a future attacker can go if we don't plan for these things in the future. And it's a tricky line to walk. Do we outright ban cellphones? If you do, all the teams who use social media from the field side or can't afford cameras beyond their phones are being denied a large portion of their team identity. But clearly letting everyone have access is also an issue. So do we fix it on FIRST's side? Make the routers inaccessible? Because that's got a whole bunch of other issues associated with it. So let's talk about those issues, and find a solution to the problem of a guy with a smartphone knocking out robot connections, instead of finding a guy we can yell at for weeks on end.