Re: diffs and opinion II

[OorQue@aol.com]

In a message dated 99-10-09 11:06:13 EDT, sbigelow@sprint.ca writes:

> Well, yes, I assume he owns the paper...but not the rights to distribute it,
> or web-publish it.

"White papers," for those who don't know, are propaganda prepared by 
companies to promote their products.  Having received hundreds, if not 
thousands of these while I was involved with publishing audio magazines, I 
can't believe that any company would take offense at one being published on 
the web, let alone pursue legal action against the person who did so.  
(Needless to say, the cynical among you will also realize that "white papers" 
rarely point out a product's shortcomings, unreservered praise being the 
general rule.)  Mind you, the SAE makes money by selling reprints of its 
articles and I would expect them to protect their copyright vigorously.

As for the names that appear on patents, my personal experience with this -- 
years ago, I had a girlfriend who worked as a research engineer and was part 
of project that was issued several patents -- is that this is governed by 
corporate politics (isn't everything?) and the inclusion or omission of a 
name shouldn't be construed as a measure of how much they did or didn't 
contribute to its design. 

And while I'm at it, the idea that a misaligned car would cause it to 
"understeer-oversteer-understeer" in the way that's been attributed to the 
Torsen diff is laughable.  Misalignment can certainly cause a car to handle 
poorly but not in the way that Dave and Phil are suggesting, as a careful 
study of the Type 44's rear suspension design would show.  Now, if they 
wanted to suggest that the misalignment caused it to 
"oversteer-understeer-oversteer," I wouldn't argue -- that's definitely 
possible -- but that clearly wasn't their claim here.

JG