How about wiring homes with DC so that damn near every piece of electric equipment doesn't have to take a >10% efficiency hit in order to operate?
So, how many different voltages do you propose? If only one, then most devices will still have to have a converter and modern switching power supplies have about the same efficiency when operating on DC instead of AC, since the first thing they do is rectify the AC into DC.
Low voltage (like 5V or 12V) won't work for powerful devices (fridge, microwave, PC), so you will need higher voltage (maybe keep the same 230V as it is now, but DC), but then you will still need to step it down.
Or perhaps outlaw that scourge to computer efficiency, the hard drive?
The hard drive does not use much power, maybe 10-15W, on the other hand, a good video card uses 150W and a high-end CPU about 100W, so instead of banning hard drives, we should ban video games that require a 150W GPU?
My car turns off the signal if I turn the wheel to the opposite direction than the signal is indicating. It works most of the time, at other times, the clicking of the relay and the flashing light makes me notice quite fast that it did not turn off automatically.
One is trying to do a right hand turn onto a four lane road. The car to your left has his right turn signal on. Do you assume the car is going to turn and proceed or do you assume that the car made a lane change and just forgot to turn the signal off?
He either wants to get in my lane or turn right from the 2nd lane, you are usually not allowed to turn right from the second lane, so I assume he wants to get in my lane and may even slow down to let him in (though if there are no cars behind me, then he can get behind me). I never assume that the guy forgot to turn the signal off, well, unless it is possible to do what he is signaling but he isn't doing it.
Your are in the left hand lane of a two lane freeway the car ahead of you is going 15 mph below the speed limit and has its right hand turn signal on. Do you wait to see if the car is actually going to change lanes or do you go to the right hand lane and pass the car on the right.
Wait and see.
It might be dangerous to turn your signal on but it is just a dangerous to forget to turn them off so if there are no cars that could use my signal than I will not turn it on.
I turn it on always when it is required by the rules, even if I'm alone in the road. This is so I can do it automatically and do not need to think ("Do I turn the signal on? Let's see: no cops around, no cars that I think could use my signal, OK, I'll leave it off") because then there is higher chance of me not turning the signal on when it's needed (a cop saw me, a car was in my blind spot etc).I remember to turn it off quite fast and most of the time the signal turns off automatically (and in some cases I have to hold it on - or example in a small roundabout).
So, use a halogen lamp, but connect a big fat resistor in series with it to lower the temperature and make the light the same color as a regular incandescent lamp.
How would that affect the life expectancy of the light bulb? Reducing the temperature would reduce the speed at which the filament evaporates, but IIRC halogen light bulbs use the high temperature to somehow put the tungsten back in the filament.
Of course not:), just that the internet is global, and the person who said it may not know the laws in your area. For example, where I live it probably is illegal to record a conversation without warning the other party first, because when I call customer service of the phone company, I get a pre-recorded warning that the conversation will be recorded (I also record it at my end in case the guy/girl says something stupid).
Really? 8TB of hard drive space just because the guy is too lazy to go grab a DVD when he wants to watch it? Unless he keeps his DVDs in another house, I doubt it. Then again, the legit DVDs that I have, do not start playing the movie, but play a bunch of ads instead, so I could see the point of ripping the DVD so that the ads could be removed.
I use LTO-2 tapes to archive the stuff that I already watched (as they take up less space than DVDs).
How many movies have you ever seen than you'd want to watch again?
Movies? Probably not that many, I do not watch that many movies anyway, mainly TV shows. TV shows? Sure, I watched B5 and DS9 like 6 times each.
As for the archiving, I archive because I do not know if I am able to download the same movie in the future. Maybe everybody stops seeding (the downside of BitTorrent compared to, say, Gnutella or ed2k, is that you have to specifically seed the file, instead of pointing the program to your folder of things you want to share and letting others download them), maybe the internet gets locked down, I cannot predict the future, but sure as hell, I am not deleting those Law & Order episodes that took over a month to download using eMule.
Also, HD video takes up a lot of space. A 1080p (x264) movie is 10GB or more, a BD rip is ~40GB.
I also have a record, cassette and reel tape collection, as well as a lot of music TV shows and concerts recorded from TV on VHS (I still record to VHS now). Add to that my LTO tape, hard drive and DVD collection and you will have my "external memory".
My room reaches 34-40 degrees in the summer, I usually replace the fans of my computers with the fastest ones of that size, so tornado mode is OK (I have two servers and they automatically reduce the fan speed when it gets colder (say, in winter, when I can keep my room at a pleasant (to me) 15 degrees).
The case looks interesting, but no local computer store has it and buying it on ebay would cost a lot in shipping charges.
I also like the additional features of server-grade stuff - redundant power supplies (which means I can clean the dust from them without turning off the server) redundant fans and so on.
My problem is that new servers are too expensive (and a bit overpowered). While older (not 10 year old like the one I ma using now, but, say, 3-4 year old) would be OK in price and CPU power, they only accept the expensive SCSI hard drives, while newer ones can use cheaper SATA drives. So, if I wait a couple of years, then the current servers will become the "older" and cheaper ones, but still with SATA support. Then I will buy one and fill it with Seagate Constellation ES or WD RE drives.
Putting everything in a single server has its advantages - lower power consumption for one (because you do not need to heat additional CPUs, RAM etc) and less physical space used.
I used the "just add another box" method some years ago, so now I have ~3TB (in >10 hard drives) and 6 computers (including the main one), total power consumption ~1.2kW. I would love to replace 5 of them with a single server, but servers are really expensive, especially the ones that have more than 4 HDD slots and a rackmount (seriously, I have not seen a 3-4U server that had a lot of hard drive slots, but less than 4 CPU sockets, I do not need that much CPU power, but all 1-2 socket servers are 1-2U, which means less space for HDDs). I would probably use that server for ~10 years, so it has to be good.
The advantage of multiple servers is that if one goes down I only lose some functions.
IMO two things are going on here: 1. More people means more people with defects. 2. Because our medicine is quite advanced, compared to what was 100 years ago, more people can survive even though they have defects. Also, when someone dies, we can usually figure out the cause, instead of "unknown illness".
My grandmother told me that when she was young (before WW2), not a lot of children survived, it was "normal" that at least some of your children would die before reaching adulthood, be it some incurable disease (that would be curable now, or at least treatment would be available so you could live with it) or injury. So, all those that had weaker immune systems or some birth defects, died, making it seem that everyone was healthy (since usually the dead do not count).
If you ran a red light and hit my car, you should be responsible for ALL damage to my car and replacing it with a new one.
Well that's what insurance is for - I pay them each year so that if I hit your car, the company will pay you the money to fix it. But I will nor be responsible to ALL damage to your car - maybe you hit a tree on your way to that intersection, why should I pay for that. I will, however pay a fine to the government (if applicable), but you will see just enough money to repair the damage I caused.
If it's only about insurance then yes, let the insurance companies worry about that. But what it the accident is big enough that it could put the driver (if he was driving) in jail? The mandatory insurance (at least in my country) does nor cover criminal liability, so if the judge decides that you should pay a fine or go to jail, then you do it, the insurance company won't do it for you (but it will pay for the damage caused to the other person/car).
An example: because of some software bug, the driverless car hits another car from behind, causing that car to go out of control and enter the opposite lane, where it gets hit by a big truck and all 7 people in that car die. When a drunk driver caused this accident a couple of years ago, he got 10 years and will have to pay ~430kEUR to the families of the people he killed. Now, I really doubt that insurance would cover the entire sum (there probably is some maximum amount stated in the contract). Now, if an AI controlled car did this, who would do time and who would pay the 430kEUR?
My banks both have issued card with a bunch of passwords on them - all are 6 digit numbers. When logging in, the online portal asks for my user ID, my fixed password and one of the passwords on the card. I can also pay some money and get a password generator instead of the card for more security. As both banks do this (that I know of), it either is a standard practice or the law.
Oh, that would be interesting - planned obsolescence at its best. "Hi, your 5 year old car is no longer supported, buy a new one or we are not responsible for the accidents our software caused". Even better would be if the updates were only available if you bought the car new instead of used.
Cruise control is not a driverless car. All it does is to keep the speed constant, but the driver still as to do everything else. And the driver is responsible for everything that happens, since he is in control. Also, usually people turn on cruise control only if they plan on driving more or less straight and at a constant speed for a long time, that is, in a highway and not in a city. Also, cruise control does not control the direction of the car.
Driverless cars do everything, this will cause the driver to pay less attention to the road, because he has no control (by default). When he sees the kid running onto the road, his reaction will be slower, even if there was a manual override.
Going back to the cruise control example - what if a bug in the software caused the car to accelerate and hit the kid when the driver steps on the brake? Would the accident be Ford's fault (buggy software) or the drivers fault (who did try to do the right thing, but was overruled by buggy software)? Also, unlike brake pads, etc, there was no way for the driver to test the software.
Anyway, my car has mechanical controls and all the software probably consists of a bunch of transistors and electromechanical relays. I like it that way. If some electronic device starts to act up (say, the turn signal no longer works), I can debug it with an oscilloscope and a multimeter. Mechanical failures also won't cause unrelated problems (buggy software can cause a car to accelerate instead of stopping, there is no way any fault in my car would cause stepping on the brakes to actually open the throttle). Even if something fails and the car starts accelerating all on its own, I can still try to stop or just turn off the engine - no software to prevent that.
Trains are relatively simple from safety viewpoint - the track is fixed and even if you see somebody on the track, it may be too late to stop the train anyway. Planes are similar - the traffic is strictly controlled, the plane, when in the air, is not that hard to keep in the air. Hardest part is the landing, but even then, the traffic is strictly controlled (some other pilot probably won't try to land his plane 10 meters ahead of your plane).
Compared to them, cars are really complex, a lot of unexpected events can happen. Someone runs off to the street. Some other driver changes lanes without the turn signal, another one drives straight in an intersection when his turn signal is on. And so on. There is no ATC for cars. That's why it is extremely difficult to write software that could control a car. Or rather, I am sure that it would be quite easy to write software to control a car if the streets were empty, but not if the streets are full of other cars, some of which a driven by new drivers, some by drunk/tired ones and some by "normal" ones.
The way it is now, if I cause the accident, then I am responsible for it, because I either caused the accident myself (being drunk/asleep/distracted is no excuse) or my car failed in such a way that it caused the accident (I tried to stop, the brakes failed and I hit the car in front of mine). It was also my responsibility to maintain the car, so I am responsible even if it was the car that failed.
Now, if the driverless car hits another car and there was no mechanical failure that I could have prevented by properly maintaining the car (and no, programming the AI would not be my responsibility), who pays for the damage? I certainly won't, since I should not be responsible for something that was not under my control*. What if a bug in the software causes the car to drive, even though the red light is on?
* If a normal car goes out of control it is because I failed to maintain it and something broke (maintenance was under my control) or did something that caused it to go out of control (drove too fast for example).
After a few weeks they came back saying they couldn't follow the hushmail retrieval procedure because they had no internet access.
I know of one bank that only allows the employees to access only whitelisted web sites on the internet. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the standard security for banks.
But for protecting your financial transactions, your debit/ATM card limits you to those 4 numerical digits. I think there's something wrong with this picture.
Typing the PIN is (relatively) slow and when you do it, you are visible (to the camera in the ATM or to other people in the store), so you cannot stand there all day trying 10k combinations. Also, ATMs lock (swallow) your card if you fail to enter the correct PIN three times in a row. Also, to even try that, the attacker has have your card, and you can call the bank and get it blocked if you lose the card or it is stolen from you.
Unlike an online service which you can bruteforce using TOR and try those combinations and there is only single factor authentication.
Not slap-of-the-wrist pay this $500k settlement so everyone gets a $1 coupon on their next purchase but "the families affected will own 30% of your company if you fuck up".
In my opinion a huge fine (for example, combined income of the product sold in the country + some fixed amount) that goes to the government is better. The families affected should only receive compensation for the actual damage (treatment costs etc), so that nobody gets the idea of deliberately exposing their child to those toys with those chemicals (hmm, this toy has lead and cadmium, probably the company will get fined soon) just so they could profit from it.
There would probably be less microwaved dogs if the owner of the dog only got the money for a new dog (or however you determine the financial loss of a dog dying) and not $100k because the user manual of the microwave does not state that you shouldn't put a live dog in it, unless you intend to kill it.
Internet connections are good in Lithuania. I have a 300mbps up/down connection, and it's not that expensive (~23EUR/month). Also, the government is laying a lot of fiber currently, the aim is to bring fast internet connections to rural areas. The larger cities are well covered by TEO (the landline phone company), who is also laying a lot of fiber in an attempt to phase out DSL.
All in all, I'd say the infrastructure is good. As for poverty, yes, but computers are cheap (you can buy used) and the internet connections are cheap (cheapest always-on fiber connection - ~11EUR/month, 40mbps, DSL costs pretty much the same, but is much slower, but as I said, TEO is upgrading the infrastructure pretty fast).
The situation is a bit worse when it comes to wireless - Internet over cell network costs ~14.5EUR for 15GB/month (that is, after you download 15GB, the connection slows down to 512bps but no additional charges). Internet over WiMAX is a bit better - 11.6EUR/month for 1mbps and 20EUR/month for 10mbps but without data limits. However, WiMAX coverage is much smaller than the cell network - there are a lot of 3G base stations and basic (2G) coverage is over 99% of the area.
I use a red style (it's called RubyXP, but googling it finds a different one, basically it's the same as the standard blue style, just red and the start button is smaller and with no text). The classic (Windows 2000) theme is my 2nd favorite, the only problem I have with it is that it's harder to make it look good in red. I probably could just switch to the classic theme, but as I used this one for many years, I am used to it (and back when I was 14 or so, the XP theme looked better to me than 2000, I guess I was the target demographic for it). I do not like Windows 7 theme though. So, basically, I prefer the classic theme with one exception - the Windows XP style that I got used to.
Other than watching videos or playing video games, I almost never maximize an app. I keep it at around 1200x1000 or smaller (my desktop resolution is usually 1600x1200, but I can switch it to 1920x1440 if I run out of space). I do not usually need the app window to be larger and if I keep it this way, I can have parts of other windows poking out from below (Z axis), so I can switch to them without clicking on the taskbar. It is a bit faster for me to remember where I left the window rather than what its title is supposed to be.
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How about wiring homes with DC so that damn near every piece of electric equipment doesn't have to take a >10% efficiency hit in order to operate?
So, how many different voltages do you propose? If only one, then most devices will still have to have a converter and modern switching power supplies have about the same efficiency when operating on DC instead of AC, since the first thing they do is rectify the AC into DC.
Low voltage (like 5V or 12V) won't work for powerful devices (fridge, microwave, PC), so you will need higher voltage (maybe keep the same 230V as it is now, but DC), but then you will still need to step it down.
Or perhaps outlaw that scourge to computer efficiency, the hard drive?
The hard drive does not use much power, maybe 10-15W, on the other hand, a good video card uses 150W and a high-end CPU about 100W, so instead of banning hard drives, we should ban video games that require a 150W GPU?
But when the airbags were introduced, the negligent drivers most likely did not know that it's not fun when the airbag deploys.
Looks interesting, but it probably wouldn't work if there are no lane markers (common where I live).
My car turns off the signal if I turn the wheel to the opposite direction than the signal is indicating. It works most of the time, at other times, the clicking of the relay and the flashing light makes me notice quite fast that it did not turn off automatically.
One is trying to do a right hand turn onto a four lane road. The car to your left has his right turn signal on. Do you assume the car is going to turn and proceed or do you assume that the car made a lane change and just forgot to turn the signal off?
He either wants to get in my lane or turn right from the 2nd lane, you are usually not allowed to turn right from the second lane, so I assume he wants to get in my lane and may even slow down to let him in (though if there are no cars behind me, then he can get behind me).
I never assume that the guy forgot to turn the signal off, well, unless it is possible to do what he is signaling but he isn't doing it.
Your are in the left hand lane of a two lane freeway the car ahead of you is going 15 mph below the speed limit and has its right hand turn signal on. Do you wait to see if the car is actually going to change lanes or do you go to the right hand lane and pass the car on the right.
Wait and see.
It might be dangerous to turn your signal on but it is just a dangerous to forget to turn them off so if there are no cars that could use my signal than I will not turn it on.
I turn it on always when it is required by the rules, even if I'm alone in the road. This is so I can do it automatically and do not need to think ("Do I turn the signal on? Let's see: no cops around, no cars that I think could use my signal, OK, I'll leave it off") because then there is higher chance of me not turning the signal on when it's needed (a cop saw me, a car was in my blind spot etc).I remember to turn it off quite fast and most of the time the signal turns off automatically (and in some cases I have to hold it on - or example in a small roundabout).
So, use a halogen lamp, but connect a big fat resistor in series with it to lower the temperature and make the light the same color as a regular incandescent lamp.
How would that affect the life expectancy of the light bulb? Reducing the temperature would reduce the speed at which the filament evaporates, but IIRC halogen light bulbs use the high temperature to somehow put the tungsten back in the filament.
Of course not :), just that the internet is global, and the person who said it may not know the laws in your area. For example, where I live it probably is illegal to record a conversation without warning the other party first, because when I call customer service of the phone company, I get a pre-recorded warning that the conversation will be recorded (I also record it at my end in case the guy/girl says something stupid).
Really? 8TB of hard drive space just because the guy is too lazy to go grab a DVD when he wants to watch it? Unless he keeps his DVDs in another house, I doubt it.
Then again, the legit DVDs that I have, do not start playing the movie, but play a bunch of ads instead, so I could see the point of ripping the DVD so that the ads could be removed.
I use LTO-2 tapes to archive the stuff that I already watched (as they take up less space than DVDs).
How many movies have you ever seen than you'd want to watch again?
Movies? Probably not that many, I do not watch that many movies anyway, mainly TV shows. TV shows? Sure, I watched B5 and DS9 like 6 times each.
As for the archiving, I archive because I do not know if I am able to download the same movie in the future. Maybe everybody stops seeding (the downside of BitTorrent compared to, say, Gnutella or ed2k, is that you have to specifically seed the file, instead of pointing the program to your folder of things you want to share and letting others download them), maybe the internet gets locked down, I cannot predict the future, but sure as hell, I am not deleting those Law & Order episodes that took over a month to download using eMule.
Also, HD video takes up a lot of space. A 1080p (x264) movie is 10GB or more, a BD rip is ~40GB.
I also have a record, cassette and reel tape collection, as well as a lot of music TV shows and concerts recorded from TV on VHS (I still record to VHS now). Add to that my LTO tape, hard drive and DVD collection and you will have my "external memory".
My room reaches 34-40 degrees in the summer, I usually replace the fans of my computers with the fastest ones of that size, so tornado mode is OK (I have two servers and they automatically reduce the fan speed when it gets colder (say, in winter, when I can keep my room at a pleasant (to me) 15 degrees).
The case looks interesting, but no local computer store has it and buying it on ebay would cost a lot in shipping charges.
I also like the additional features of server-grade stuff - redundant power supplies (which means I can clean the dust from them without turning off the server) redundant fans and so on.
My problem is that new servers are too expensive (and a bit overpowered). While older (not 10 year old like the one I ma using now, but, say, 3-4 year old) would be OK in price and CPU power, they only accept the expensive SCSI hard drives, while newer ones can use cheaper SATA drives. So, if I wait a couple of years, then the current servers will become the "older" and cheaper ones, but still with SATA support. Then I will buy one and fill it with Seagate Constellation ES or WD RE drives.
Putting everything in a single server has its advantages - lower power consumption for one (because you do not need to heat additional CPUs, RAM etc) and less physical space used.
I used the "just add another box" method some years ago, so now I have ~3TB (in >10 hard drives) and 6 computers (including the main one), total power consumption ~1.2kW. I would love to replace 5 of them with a single server, but servers are really expensive, especially the ones that have more than 4 HDD slots and a rackmount (seriously, I have not seen a 3-4U server that had a lot of hard drive slots, but less than 4 CPU sockets, I do not need that much CPU power, but all 1-2 socket servers are 1-2U, which means less space for HDDs). I would probably use that server for ~10 years, so it has to be good.
The advantage of multiple servers is that if one goes down I only lose some functions.
IMO two things are going on here:
1. More people means more people with defects.
2. Because our medicine is quite advanced, compared to what was 100 years ago, more people can survive even though they have defects. Also, when someone dies, we can usually figure out the cause, instead of "unknown illness".
My grandmother told me that when she was young (before WW2), not a lot of children survived, it was "normal" that at least some of your children would die before reaching adulthood, be it some incurable disease (that would be curable now, or at least treatment would be available so you could live with it) or injury. So, all those that had weaker immune systems or some birth defects, died, making it seem that everyone was healthy (since usually the dead do not count).
If you ran a red light and hit my car, you should be responsible for ALL damage to my car and replacing it with a new one.
Well that's what insurance is for - I pay them each year so that if I hit your car, the company will pay you the money to fix it. But I will nor be responsible to ALL damage to your car - maybe you hit a tree on your way to that intersection, why should I pay for that. I will, however pay a fine to the government (if applicable), but you will see just enough money to repair the damage I caused.
If it's only about insurance then yes, let the insurance companies worry about that. But what it the accident is big enough that it could put the driver (if he was driving) in jail? The mandatory insurance (at least in my country) does nor cover criminal liability, so if the judge decides that you should pay a fine or go to jail, then you do it, the insurance company won't do it for you (but it will pay for the damage caused to the other person/car).
An example: because of some software bug, the driverless car hits another car from behind, causing that car to go out of control and enter the opposite lane, where it gets hit by a big truck and all 7 people in that car die. When a drunk driver caused this accident a couple of years ago, he got 10 years and will have to pay ~430kEUR to the families of the people he killed. Now, I really doubt that insurance would cover the entire sum (there probably is some maximum amount stated in the contract). Now, if an AI controlled car did this, who would do time and who would pay the 430kEUR?
My banks both have issued card with a bunch of passwords on them - all are 6 digit numbers. When logging in, the online portal asks for my user ID, my fixed password and one of the passwords on the card.
I can also pay some money and get a password generator instead of the card for more security. As both banks do this (that I know of), it either is a standard practice or the law.
Oh, that would be interesting - planned obsolescence at its best. "Hi, your 5 year old car is no longer supported, buy a new one or we are not responsible for the accidents our software caused". Even better would be if the updates were only available if you bought the car new instead of used.
Cruise control is not a driverless car. All it does is to keep the speed constant, but the driver still as to do everything else. And the driver is responsible for everything that happens, since he is in control. Also, usually people turn on cruise control only if they plan on driving more or less straight and at a constant speed for a long time, that is, in a highway and not in a city. Also, cruise control does not control the direction of the car.
Driverless cars do everything, this will cause the driver to pay less attention to the road, because he has no control (by default). When he sees the kid running onto the road, his reaction will be slower, even if there was a manual override.
Going back to the cruise control example - what if a bug in the software caused the car to accelerate and hit the kid when the driver steps on the brake? Would the accident be Ford's fault (buggy software) or the drivers fault (who did try to do the right thing, but was overruled by buggy software)? Also, unlike brake pads, etc, there was no way for the driver to test the software.
Anyway, my car has mechanical controls and all the software probably consists of a bunch of transistors and electromechanical relays. I like it that way. If some electronic device starts to act up (say, the turn signal no longer works), I can debug it with an oscilloscope and a multimeter. Mechanical failures also won't cause unrelated problems (buggy software can cause a car to accelerate instead of stopping, there is no way any fault in my car would cause stepping on the brakes to actually open the throttle). Even if something fails and the car starts accelerating all on its own, I can still try to stop or just turn off the engine - no software to prevent that.
Trains are relatively simple from safety viewpoint - the track is fixed and even if you see somebody on the track, it may be too late to stop the train anyway.
Planes are similar - the traffic is strictly controlled, the plane, when in the air, is not that hard to keep in the air. Hardest part is the landing, but even then, the traffic is strictly controlled (some other pilot probably won't try to land his plane 10 meters ahead of your plane).
Compared to them, cars are really complex, a lot of unexpected events can happen. Someone runs off to the street. Some other driver changes lanes without the turn signal, another one drives straight in an intersection when his turn signal is on. And so on. There is no ATC for cars. That's why it is extremely difficult to write software that could control a car. Or rather, I am sure that it would be quite easy to write software to control a car if the streets were empty, but not if the streets are full of other cars, some of which a driven by new drivers, some by drunk/tired ones and some by "normal" ones.
Also, who gets the blame?
The way it is now, if I cause the accident, then I am responsible for it, because I either caused the accident myself (being drunk/asleep/distracted is no excuse) or my car failed in such a way that it caused the accident (I tried to stop, the brakes failed and I hit the car in front of mine). It was also my responsibility to maintain the car, so I am responsible even if it was the car that failed.
Now, if the driverless car hits another car and there was no mechanical failure that I could have prevented by properly maintaining the car (and no, programming the AI would not be my responsibility), who pays for the damage? I certainly won't, since I should not be responsible for something that was not under my control*.
What if a bug in the software causes the car to drive, even though the red light is on?
* If a normal car goes out of control it is because I failed to maintain it and something broke (maintenance was under my control) or did something that caused it to go out of control (drove too fast for example).
After a few weeks they came back saying they couldn't follow the hushmail retrieval procedure because they had no internet access.
I know of one bank that only allows the employees to access only whitelisted web sites on the internet. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the standard security for banks.
But for protecting your financial transactions, your debit/ATM card limits you to those 4 numerical digits. I think there's something wrong with this picture.
Typing the PIN is (relatively) slow and when you do it, you are visible (to the camera in the ATM or to other people in the store), so you cannot stand there all day trying 10k combinations. Also, ATMs lock (swallow) your card if you fail to enter the correct PIN three times in a row. Also, to even try that, the attacker has have your card, and you can call the bank and get it blocked if you lose the card or it is stolen from you.
Unlike an online service which you can bruteforce using TOR and try those combinations and there is only single factor authentication.
Not slap-of-the-wrist pay this $500k settlement so everyone gets a $1 coupon on their next purchase but "the families affected will own 30% of your company if you fuck up".
In my opinion a huge fine (for example, combined income of the product sold in the country + some fixed amount) that goes to the government is better. The families affected should only receive compensation for the actual damage (treatment costs etc), so that nobody gets the idea of deliberately exposing their child to those toys with those chemicals (hmm, this toy has lead and cadmium, probably the company will get fined soon) just so they could profit from it.
There would probably be less microwaved dogs if the owner of the dog only got the money for a new dog (or however you determine the financial loss of a dog dying) and not $100k because the user manual of the microwave does not state that you shouldn't put a live dog in it, unless you intend to kill it.
Internet connections are good in Lithuania. I have a 300mbps up/down connection, and it's not that expensive (~23EUR/month). Also, the government is laying a lot of fiber currently, the aim is to bring fast internet connections to rural areas. The larger cities are well covered by TEO (the landline phone company), who is also laying a lot of fiber in an attempt to phase out DSL.
All in all, I'd say the infrastructure is good. As for poverty, yes, but computers are cheap (you can buy used) and the internet connections are cheap (cheapest always-on fiber connection - ~11EUR/month, 40mbps, DSL costs pretty much the same, but is much slower, but as I said, TEO is upgrading the infrastructure pretty fast).
The situation is a bit worse when it comes to wireless - Internet over cell network costs ~14.5EUR for 15GB/month (that is, after you download 15GB, the connection slows down to 512bps but no additional charges). Internet over WiMAX is a bit better - 11.6EUR/month for 1mbps and 20EUR/month for 10mbps but without data limits. However, WiMAX coverage is much smaller than the cell network - there are a lot of 3G base stations and basic (2G) coverage is over 99% of the area.
I use a red style (it's called RubyXP, but googling it finds a different one, basically it's the same as the standard blue style, just red and the start button is smaller and with no text). The classic (Windows 2000) theme is my 2nd favorite, the only problem I have with it is that it's harder to make it look good in red. I probably could just switch to the classic theme, but as I used this one for many years, I am used to it (and back when I was 14 or so, the XP theme looked better to me than 2000, I guess I was the target demographic for it). I do not like Windows 7 theme though. So, basically, I prefer the classic theme with one exception - the Windows XP style that I got used to.
Other than watching videos or playing video games, I almost never maximize an app. I keep it at around 1200x1000 or smaller (my desktop resolution is usually 1600x1200, but I can switch it to 1920x1440 if I run out of space). I do not usually need the app window to be larger and if I keep it this way, I can have parts of other windows poking out from below (Z axis), so I can switch to them without clicking on the taskbar. It is a bit faster for me to remember where I left the window rather than what its title is supposed to be.