No Cash Prize for Next DARPA Grand Challenge 107
General Lee's Peking writes to mention an Associated Press article about a sad development in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Because of some new DoD-related legislation, the organization will no longer be able to award the $2 Million prize to grand challenge winners. It's not all bad, though; they still get a trophy. From the article: "The absence of a lucrative cash prize has forced some teams to retool their game plan and others to drop out. Some fear it would be harder to attract corporate sponsors and hurt media coverage of the race, which drew a throng of reporters last year and inspired a PBS documentary. 'The icing on the cake is gone,' said Ivar Schoenmeyr, team leader of California-based Team CyberRider, which is retrofitting a Toyota Prius hybrid."
No Cash Prize? (Score:5, Funny)
So much for recovering my development expenses on these ideas:
note: Sharks with Lasers is someone else's idea so I clearly can't try to compete with that one.
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Or for soldiers who like to post lame stunt videos on the internet.
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[quote]Rocket-powered Army Jeep (for when you need to get out FAST!)[/quote]
Or for soldiers who like to post lame stunt videos on the internet.
I've only seen Royal Army humour videos on YouTube. I certain if I even tried to look I'd find dozens, nay, hundreds of others from US Forces.
I left off a couple of recent developments..
Re:No Cash Prize? (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of Clinton in his first two years (Clipper chip, anyone?), versus his last six. When did he do better? Look at who was the majority in Congress during those periods. Educating, isn't it? In other words, a president is at his best when he is a brake on the stupidity of Congress. Of course, for an issue like this, even Clinton/Gore/Kerry are not going to veto some enormous spending bill for some obscure and relatively minor addition. For that kind of thing, you can only blame the ones who created it, which is Congress. That is where you should fight your battle.
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Without coffee, I swear the Air Force would shut down. Coffee is the real black gold.
Re:No Cash Prize? (Score:4, Funny)
Without coffee, I swear the Air Force would shut down. Coffee is the real black gold.
"OK private, we're all counting on you to get through the lines. We'll try to hold out as long as we can, but you know what we're up against. Now just to be sure you've got it right, repeat your objective."
"Vente mocha soy for Johnson, latte triple shot for Malloy, grand house blend decaf for Morales, because he's trying to cut down, tall cafe' au lait for you, Sarge, iced espresso with whipped creme for Gooch and a double espresso for me."
"Good lad, off you go!"
Little investigation (Score:1)
Re:Little investigation (Score:5, Insightful)
Stifling innovation- find out the Congress folks who pushed this legislation through and make sure their staff do a little "constituent services"
Not sure exactly what you mean there, but the Defense budget is the largest it has been in ages, it's perplexing that they'd choose to cut here, unless there's some bizarre (well, not in light of the privatisation of many military services and operations) pressure to keep this in other hands, ahem, those which would prefer to sell goods and services they develop at great expense (and thus need reimbursement) and clearly some bunch of college yahoos couldn't do as well.
Re:Little investigation (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure exactly what you mean there, but the Defense budget is the largest it has been in ages, it's perplexing that they'd choose to cut here
Two things:
That said, the US defense is the smallest it's been in ages and re-equipping three branches of the military is not cheap.
Re:Little investigation (Score:4, Insightful)
Please do not look at absolute dollar values, they are nonsense. Look at defense spending as a percentage of GDP. The US defense budget is about the same size as it was during the isolationist period leading up to WWI. In terms of percentage, the US spends about 3.8% of its GDP on defense, putting it in the same area of the list as Tanzania.
Keep in mind that a significant percentage of defence support is now performed by private industry, thus increasing the overall budget and the Pentagon does not perform a considerable amount of services itself. it's said to be more efficient, but when the DoD performed its own services the money largely stayed within the department. Further, these large requests of 70 and 80 billion to support the war on terror, are they included in these figures?
Thanks to the neglect of the military under Clinton, the Air Force has ancient aircraft and can't maintain them all because they break so fast, the Navy has too few ships and many of those still in service have entire systems which are inoperable due to neglect, and the Army can no longer rely on unlimited overseas basing, unlimited Navy sealift and unlimited Air Force airlift and so must get rid of all their heavy artillery and heavy tanks to transform to a lighter force.
The Clinton administration hardly neglected the military. Clinton didn't actively seek out conflicts to expend material on, the largest being the Serbia/Bosnia conflict, which he brought NATO in to a significant degree (as it was most member states' own backyard this seems fair.) Clinton prefered diplomatic engagement, building support over unilateral moves. Clinton was more fiscally conservative than his successor.
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Clinton was amazingly fiscally conservative.
He was almost my dream of a succesful libertarian candidate.
Totally fiscal conservative while totally liberal socially.
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It has been under continuous drawdown, procurement of new systems is not done with thought to economies of scale, and services like the Navy and AF are slashing personnel to pay for few and overpriced new systems.
It is, provably, a bipartisan clusterfuck.
Re:Little investigation (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup... (Score:2)
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I should have been more specific: by "asshat policy maker" not thinking about the consequences of "his shiny new policy", I should've said "the shiny new policy they just wrote".
El Presidente may have signed it... but you can be damned sure he didn't actually write the thing. Someone else did, and then they managed to asskiss enough politicians to get 5 minutes of his time, during which, he likely signed a policy that, as a whole, had very little to do with the DARPA prize, but probably contained some obsc
Re:Little investigation (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, you can maybe blame him for not vetoing the spending bill, but unless he really cared about this one expenditure, why would you expect him to?
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take a long shower, because I fell really dirty after actually defending the President. But can you please save your blame of him for the tons of things that are actually his fault?
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If everyone that reads Slashdot donated $10 to this organization, they'd have a great deal of money to award people.
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Other forms of remuneration (Score:4, Funny)
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The DoD could always offer other forms of remuneration to the winner. Such a awarding contracts for supplies, such as $500 toilet seats and $250 hammers...nyet?
I could be wrong here, but don't think Stanford University is in the business of manufacturing toilet seats or hammers (though I dare say there's probably an ample supply of BFH's in the engineering school) The money awarded a university probably just goes into the general fund, where maybe the board would toss a bit of it as a reward (say, 10%)
Re:Other forms of remuneration (Score:5, Funny)
I dont think you got it....
1. Get awarded contract for 10,000 toilets at $500.
2. Go purchase 10,000 toilets through distributor for $100 each.
3. Profit!
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If they pay $500 for a toilet seat and $250 for a hammer then a nice trophy would be like $2 million.
They could award some kind of voucher to go pick the trophy the winning team wants.
You wouldnt want them stuck with just any $2 million trophy. They should pick the one they want.
I'm sure the government has some kind of voucher that would be good at any trophy shop.
Yea maybe the Govt. bank will back the voucher so you know its good, call it a "Federal R
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Its easy, They said they would award a Trophy. If they pay $500 for a toilet seat and $250 for a hammer then a nice trophy would be like $2 million. They could award some kind of voucher to go pick the trophy the winning team wants. You wouldnt want them stuck with just any $2 million trophy. They should pick the one they want. I'm sure the government has some kind of voucher that would be good at any trophy shop. Yea maybe the Govt. bank will back the voucher so you know its good, call it a "Federal
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Yeah. A big diamond encrusted trophy with rubies and sapphires as "accents." =)
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Indeed, nearly every one of those much-trumpeted examples of defense waste are not, in fact, nearly as stupid as people would like to think. The one you mention is a good example of how dumbasses read line items like "toilet seat" and automatically assume it's the same as th
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The myth of the $600 hammer [govexec.com], By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. is a good article on the reasons why federal budgeting seems inflated, but isn't. Most of the article is dry budget speak, but it explains the hammer explicitly, at least.
No Cash Prize for Next DARPA Grand Challenge ? (Score:5, Funny)
Solid Snake's gonna be VERY disappointed...
...wait, what DARPA were we talking about, again?
Genius (Score:2)
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At least, for once, development of military ideas won't cost taxpayers a dime!
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Maybe this is a secret plan to get RMS to enter.
General Lee's Peking? (Score:2, Funny)
Ruined my plan (Score:5, Funny)
Step 2. Put ls460 backwards at starting line, tell it to park at finish line.
Step 3. Profit.
Translation: Boeing/Lockheed afraid of competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Business as usual for the military industry.
What if... (Score:3, Insightful)
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The article is informative:
The goal for this challenge is considerably different.What!!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Great Idea! (Score:2)
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They'll get this fixed.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is what I suspect. Especially since this is a great marketing vehicle (ba-dum!) for Science educatio
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
All they now have to do is get permission from their boss.
It appears they have chosen the ignorant route and - instead of getting requested authorization - simply claim they are not allowed
Sounds like typical Government Bureaucrats to me.
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It was DARPA's idea. DARPA's annual budget is $3e9 [darpa.mil] (check out the 7th page), and the few million they spent on the Grand Challenges was IME some of
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Simple... (Score:1)
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Insane (Score:2)
Abandon technology prizes.
They are insane.
The Real Harm (Score:5, Informative)
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http://pave.princeton.edu/ [princeton.edu]
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Well, ask your well-heeled and well connected alumni to cough up some cash - I'm sure that exclusivity(or what you want to call "competitive admissions") can come up with the difference and then some.
No New Taxes (Score:1, Informative)
We can't spend $2M on DARPA, which gives us results like the Internet, GPS, etc. We've got to spend it on 12 minutes in Iraq [speakupwny.com].
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50% Interesting
50% Troll
Congress is split about that evenly, barely favoring the TrollMods, which is one reason why we're getting so many 12 minutes in Iraq, and no DARPA Grand Challenge prizes.
In a few weeks, you'll get a chance (if you're an American voter) to pick your representative in the House, and probably your Senator, too. Decide whether they agree with your preference for DARPA or Iraq. Vote Tuesday, November 7 2006. You'll be stuck with the re
Why do R+D when we can oursource it? (Score:2)
Pretty sad (Score:2)
Yet they'll continue wasting money hand over fist for way less return elsewhere in government.
Just to add to anti-bush sentiment (Score:1)
Found the Bill's Text (Score:3, Informative)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c109:./temp/ ~c109i6ly2s [loc.gov]
Signed on October 17th. Look in Section 212, which has this:
(A) by striking `Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency' and inserting `Director of Defense Research and Engineering and the service acquisition executive for each military department'; and
Emphasis mine. You can see that now they have to add a dude (assuming that Director of Defense of DARPA is now "Director of Defense Research and Engineering", otherwise it's out of DARPA's hands all together). Maybe it's just a matter of signatures, but I can see how they have been forced to put the award on hold until they can, you know, obey the law as Congress has fiddled with it. And I confess that I haven't looked at the legislation that this section amends, which is:
Subsection (a) of section 2374a of title 10, United States Code
It doesn't matter (Score:2)
The leading teams this time are Stanford/Volkswagen, CMU/General Motors, and Oshkosh Truck. The prize doesn't matter to either. And all three already got $1 million in Government money. Each.
It's a much tougher job this time. Driving in traffic, backing out of tight spots, parking and unparking. I'll be surprised if anyone wins the first year, because nobody knows quite what to expect. Year two, someone will win.
Pennies (Score:1)
Amazing (Score:2)
Darpa URBAN challenge is the new Grand (Score:1)
Re:Is this really so bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
So yes, I would much rather see a portion of the DoD's budget spent encouraging development of revolutionary safety technology for civilian drivers rather than a big contract to a traditional defense contractor for something that directly kills people. (Keep in mind, the funds were not -cut-, DARPA's authority to use them for prizes was simply removed.)
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Also, it seemed that the top winners actually spent more to win the competition than what they received in prize money. Not saying that the prize money didn't help to recoup costs though. It could have this positive effect in that if someone doesn't win they won't see it as a crushing blow to their finances.
Yes (Re:Is this really so bad?) (Score:2, Interesting)
The cash price would generate far more media attention than a simple awards ceremony. If we want to encourage people to invest in science and technology, this is a good way to do it.
It was non-sensical to kill it.
I'll make a public committment of $200 towar
Re:Is this really so bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/04/vw_abando
The VW Lupo is available but it only does 78.4mpg(US). Their development car did much better: 0.89 litres of diesel per 100 kilometres (264 mpg) top speed was still 75mph. but they could not make the commercial version cheaper than $25K
Re:Is this really so bad? (Score:4, Informative)
To be awarded posthumously?
It's easy enough to build such a car. Easy enough that it's been done many times over the past century.
All you have to do to achieve it is give up something else. We can strive for efficiency, but we canna change the laws of physics.
KFG
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Give up? What are these laws you talk of, I don't know about you, but I'm American: I give up nothing and I write my own damned laws!
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I could achieve it with a Chevette using yesterday's technolgy. Hell, I got 60 mpg out of a box stock 1976 Fiesta, in traffic, once upon a time, as a demonstration of how much driving style effects gas milage (the Prius is not immune from this effect. Some of its reported efficiency comes from the fact that its drivers are preselected to focus on economy in their driving). I'll give you 3000 mpg gallon with yesterday's
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Just my $.02
Aaron Z
Posthumously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why in the world would you say that? You're not one of those people that thinks bigger necessarily equals safer, are you?
Sure, you might have to give up the ability to, um, I don't know. Help me out here - what exactly would you have to give up? The ability to accelerate quickly? Nope. The ability to decelerate quickly? Nope. What would you have to give up? Which "laws of physics" would one have to change? (I have an MS in Astrophysics, so don't feel that you have to speak to the layman.)
I will say this - when you're accelerating quickly you won't be getting your 100 mpg. But you can have the ability to accelerate quickly (say in an emergency) and still average 100 mpg. Forgive me for saying so, but it's not rocket science. :)
OK, so maybe you'll have to give up your "8 MPG" license plate (I actually saw one of these), but really, is that asking so much?
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No. You'll find in my other posts that I am one of those people that thinks, small, light, uncrushable carbon fiber cars are safer ( with suitable crushables, say light foam, around the carbon fiber).
If you go back and read my post again I think you'll find that I'm one of those people that thinks the designer of the 100 mpg car has already died of old age. Hence the posthumous award.
. .
Doing something vs. being able to do something (Score:2)
Fair enough. I did misunderstand what you were *driving* at.
Yes, if you're one of those prepubescent kids (which I'm guessing you're not) that likes to always gun your car from the stop-li
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Right, if you give up that accelerating most of the time. That's something to give up. Some people won't. It's what they primarily want out of a motor vehicle. There are also still tradeoffs to be made, since an engine that isn't capable of that sort of acceleration can be made smaller and lighter, but then we're getting into the 3000 mpg territory I was talking about
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About 4 oz. last week, which is about average, but not the kind you're talking about.
And I didn't inhale.
KFG
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Size isn't necessarily given up. If you use materials that have half the mass per unit volume, you can have twice the volume. Car shapes tend to waste a lot of material (cuboids have a large surface area to unit volume) and a lot of internal space to aerodynamics (you still want aerodynamics, you just don't want to waste as much
Trade-offs (Score:2)
I currently own a Civic Hybrid, and although these don't get 100 mpg yet, they have excellent acceleration, great comfort, very low noise levels, and sufficient cargo capacity. I'm confident that in the future, someone will be able to design a car that gets 100 mpg, has just as good acceleration, just as good comfort, just as low (if not lower) noise levels, and even better car
bigger USUALLY equals safer, like it or not (Score:2)
Extra distance between you and the impact point means that the impact can take longer, thus reducing the forces. For crashing into a wall, this means you should have a long hood.
Extra mass is helpful if the other object has some give, either via crushing or via being tossed the other way. Of course this applies to trees, railings, people,
I've heard this logic before (Score:2)
I've heard this logic before, and it sounds good. However, I can also cite cases where bigger is worse, and not just for a particularly bad design decision. Case in point, I was in an accident [virginia.edu] a little over a year ago involving a tractor trailer and my 1995 Honda Civic, traveling 70 mph down I-85 in Georgia. The tractor trailer clipped my back wheel, sending me out of control and hit me again on the driver's side door. My wife (in the passenger seat) and I managed to get out of our car without a scratch. No