Rule 33 Robot

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

Not all of us are an alumni sitting at college reading the forums all day. Some of us are in the middle of a build season looking for a quick answer.

So which is quicker - posting a question and waiting hours or even days for some kindhearted user to answer you, or searching for 5 or 10 minutes to see if it has been asked before?

Quite frankly, there's many posts that I don't answer simply because it has been answered a day or two ago. I get tired of doing the homework for someone else, and I'm not surprised Eric has as well.

It's quite something different if someone says, "We looked and couldn't find ..." or "The rule says [xxx], does that mean ...". Those questions I will look at and will give an opinion if I have one. That not only helps the fellow user, but helps me in my understanding of the rules.

[Chris is me]

No one's obligating you to answer questions - all we're asking is that people don't treat rookie teams like they're complete idiots because they're confused. If you're tried of answering the same question repeatedly, and can't tell someone to check the Q&A and Manual in a nice way, you can just ignore the thread.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by notmattlythgoe

My point was that not all of us have been reading the forums and Q&A all day to be able to think "Oh, I saw that somewhere." If you are tired of answering people then don't answer, there is no need to insult anyone.

Excuse me - I've insulted someone by pointing out why it might be in their best interest to do a simple search before asking a question?

Originally Posted by Chris is me

No one's obligating you to answer questions - all we're asking is that people don't treat rookie teams like they're complete idiots because they're confused. If you're tried of answering the same question repeatedly, and can't tell someone to check the Q&A and Manual in a nice way, you can just ignore the thread.

Which I believe I pointed out I do - I simply don't answer questions that have been answered a day or two before, or have been asked repeatedly.

I don't assume rookie teams are helpless, but I do have empathy for how confusing some of the rules can be.

Every team - rookie and veteran alike - should have someone devoted to reading the Q&A. It doesn't take that long. The GDC generally answers a handful of questions at one time; the most I've seen is roughly a pageful on any given day. And they don't answer questions every day. That way when a team has a question, they can ask their Q&A specialist if they recall anything about that topic. Or you might have more than one Q&A specialist, each devoted to a different section of the Q&A, to spread the workload if it's too much for one person.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Excuse me - I've insulted someone by pointing out why it might be in their best interest to do a simple search before asking a question?

I was not talking about you. I was just clarifying what I meant for you. From what you say that is the perfect thing to do, answer the question and then remind them of where they can find the answers themselves.

[brian3795]

You know what would help? A search system that can handle simple "and" and "or" queries. (If the functionality exists, I've not figured it out, so it must not be all that intuitive.) Limiting search capabilities to one-word search phrases is just...well, rather useless.

Of course, we're just a rookie team, so what do we know...

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by brian3795

You know what would help? A search system that can handle simple "and" and "or" queries. (If the functionality exists, I've not figured it out, so it must not be all that intuitive.) Limiting search capabilities to one-word search phrases is just...well, rather useless.

What you should know is that this site is volunteer-run and self-funded. Kick in $50,000 and a lot of extra functionality can be added.

[brian3795]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

What you should know is that this site is volunteer-run and self-funded. Kick in $50,000 and a lot of extra functionality can be added.

I easily donate that much worth of my time a year for the open source projects I'm involved in. I can tell you it doesn't cost $50K to provide decent search functionality.

Plus, you seem to miss my point: With all the griping about people not finding various threads, the obvious solution is to spend a small amount of time supporting boolean search functionality.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by brian3795

Plus, you seem to miss my point: With all the griping about people not finding various threads, the obvious solution is to spend a small amount of time supporting boolean search functionality.

It is supported already. Just try it.

For example, I just did one on "minibot AND legal". I turned up 4 pages worth of threads, with both words highlighted in those threads. There used to be a note on one of the search pages that boolean worked--somewhere along the line, it disappeared.

You can search any number of words.

Now, on your rules question: What is the definition of Fabricated? It's a part of some form (component or mechanism) that has been modified somehow into its final form for robot use, completely or partially. (Paraphrase of the definition in Section 1.6) As such, that collection of parts on the acrylic sheet would be a Mechanism, a Fabricated Mechanism (note the definition of Mechanism in the same section). As it is Fabricated, it would indeed count against your Withholding Allowance.

P.S. If you have a suggestion for the webmaster, there is a subforum to make it in: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8

[brian3795]

Do COTS control devices mounted on an acrylic sheet count as a FABRICATED assembly for withholding allowance purposes? The blue-box comment in the rules docs seems to indicate the ruels favor continued programming work on the control interfaces after the bot ships...so we are wondering if we need to disassemble our collection of COTS interfaces in order to avoid our collection classified as a FABRICATED assembly.

[Jakedasnakeman]

Originally Posted by brian3795

You know what would help? A search system that can handle simple "and" and "or" queries. (If the functionality exists, I've not figured it out, so it must not be all that intuitive.) Limiting search capabilities to one-word search phrases is just...well, rather useless.

Of course, we're just a rookie team, so what do we know...

Ha, there is nothing wrong with being a rookie team

Go search google. type in multiple words. Lets do the search, rookie team When you look at the URL (web address), it says
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=...188ee12107320c

The part i want you to focus on is the rookie + team part

In any search engine or forum, to search for more than one word, use Rookie + team, replacing those with words that you want to look for.

EX
i want to look for Blarglefish and Team 1255

1255 + Blarglefish

and that will search for both words in the forums


Hope this helped, and have a great build season

[brian3795]

Originally Posted by Jakedasnakeman

Ha, there is nothing wrong with being a rookie team

That's great to know!

Go search google. type in multiple words. Lets do the search, rookie team When you look at the URL (web address), it says
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=...188ee12107320c

Sorry, we weren't doing a google search...

In any search engine or forum, to search for more than one word, use Rookie + team, replacing those with words that you want to look for.

Doesn't seem to work on this forum. It's more of an "or" search with the "+" ignored. For instance, search on a string of words concatenated with "+" symbols. I think you'll find you will pull up many "hits" that don't include all the terms.

But no worries...I just toss the suggestion out there for whoever keeps track of such things. Don't get me wrong -- this is a great resource!

[brian3795]

Now, on your rules question: What is the definition of Fabricated? It's a part of some form (component or mechanism) that has been modified somehow into its final form for robot use, completely or partially. (Paraphrase of the definition in Section 1.6) As such, that collection of parts on the acrylic sheet would be a Mechanism, a Fabricated Mechanism (note the definition of Mechanism in the same section). As it is Fabricated, it would indeed count against your Withholding Allowance.

So the idea here is to mount all your control devices in such a way that you can pull them all off, stuff them in a box, and carry them in as COTS items to be reassembled at the contest. In this scenario, the only item that would count towards your withholding allowance would be the acrylic sheet.

Seems simple enough. Thanks!

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by brian3795

...Doesn't seem to work on this forum. It's more of an "or" search with the "+" ignored. For instance, search on a string of words concatenated with "+" symbols. I think you'll find you will pull up many "hits" that don't include all the terms...

Brian, et al,

A search for posts with

+words +concatenated +with

will return your post and nothing else...

Regards,

Mike

[brian3795]

Now for the rest of the story...

Said searches work best when "Show Results as Posts" is selected...otherwise, non-matching search results are returned on a per-thread basis (rather useless in threads with many posts). Maybe "Show Results as Posts" should be the default.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Which I believe I pointed out I do - I simply don't answer questions that have been answered a day or two before, or have been asked repeatedly.

Sorry about the confusion - everything except the first line of the post wasn't intended to be directed at you in particular.

Great communication skills coming from here...