For instance, before GM had the Passkey system the Camaro was the most stolen car year after year. Once Passkey was introduced it completely dropped off the list.
Wow, those must be some dumb thieves. It's bloody easy to fool Passkey.
IIRC, the widget built into the key only had 16 different possible values. Cut the wires heading to the keyswitch, or under the dash if you're familiar with the layout, and you'd be out of there in under a minute with a substitute resistor.
I did this once to trick Passkey on an '96 Olds, when I helped a friend put a remote starter into it. In that case, I just measured the key with an Ohm meter and used the appropriate resistor. But if I was a thief, I think I'd be keen on using a decade box and just make it work... I might even wire up a start button to save time, and tie the whole thing in with a few clip leads of appropriate gauge.
I tend to try to live ready for anything though, knife, firestarting stuff and various other tools on me at all times.
Yeah, I smoke, too. I'm never far from a lighter (which I guess is what you mean by "firestarting stuff").
I also carry a couple of identical pocket knives. One for abuse, one to keep sharp -- though I try to keep them both sharp, it never really works out. In daily use, the abused one gets to open boxes and the like. The non-abused blade gets to do detailed work. In an emergency, the dull one will cut brush while the sharp one will do self-surgery just fine. Both are half-serrated, which I myself find very useful.
The other tool I have with me at all times is a little flat-blade screwdriver. It's a ~15-year-old Vermont American piece of shit, that I've ground the blade down on a bit. It works in daily use (small screw terminals and the like), as well as Phillips #1 and #2, and most slotted screws up to gigantic, plus some common small Torx sizes. It has also served well as a small lever, a punch, and an awl. It has shown no signs of wear other than a light coating of rust from being in my pocket all that time, and the marks from the bench grinder from the time that I last customized it.
(Sadly, the screwdriver is no longer being produced. I've looked for and tried substitutes, but the steel is always too soft, and goes wonky after the first episode of abuse.)
Listen up. I want things to be as simple as possible. Adding more things onto the thought-process pile in a stressful situation with little potential benefit and a lot of potential detriment is not on my top-10 list of things that I consider positive.
Meanwhile, you're wrong in so many ways that I won't entertain this discourse any longer.
For example: Oh, look! The car is upside down in a ditch, and Joe is bleeding in the back seat, but hey everyone! The deer is OK!!!
And, no, there's no promise that the stopping distance would've been shorter without ABS. I panic, lock the wheels, and slide. Yay! Meanwhile, the rubber (which is a lousy fucking heatsink) turns to muck, and the car slides around.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll keep my friction losses where they belong: Between the pads and the rotor.
Your question was already answered: "stopping the truck however you (and your reaction delay) think it should best be stopped."
No, I'm not an ABS evangelist. I understand and am fully capable of threshold braking. And I have driven the same car, at length, both with and without ABS.
I learned that I prefer having ABS available and working properly.
Why? Because I'm human, I make mistakes. I'm not always 100% focused on my surroundings, and even if I am, I can't see all things at once. My brain does not always operate at 100%. I am susceptible to various degrees of being tired. I think I'm an OK driver most of the time, but I'm also an excellent driver some of the time, and quite certainly a lousy driver the rest of the time. And I have no control over my surroundings during a typical road trip.
So, picture it. I'm driving along a dark, rural divided highway at night and somewhere in my peripheral vision I notice something move that looks like it might be a deer. Based on this fleeting glimpse at the edge of the headlights, I dumped as much speed as I could by mashing the brake pedal into the firewall and kept the wheel straight. The deer, which I could now plainly see running toward the car, then got nailed by the bumper. After breaking off both headlights (they were pop-up) the fucker slid up the hood toward the windshield and all I could think was "fuck, I wish I could somehow brake a little harder, or I might have that deer in my lap."
It didn't make it through the window, which is good. The car didn't survive (bummer), but the folks inside of it were all fine. It stopped in a neat, straight line. This all went down in a second or two -- things happened fast.
Without ABS, things would've played out almost the same. My initial reaction would've been the same: dump speed as quickly as possible. But the method for doing would've been different: I'd have to think. I'd have to brake gradually as the weight transferred to the front axle. I'd have to monitor its progress, using my eyes, ears, inner ears, and brain. I'd have to consider the type of pavement and the condition of it. I'd have to do these things to avoid locking the brakes, possibly resulting in a loss of control, or at least making it harder to keep the car going straight.
And I can do all that stuff. In fact, I really do enjoy playing with non-ABS cars just for all of those reasons, when my surroundings are predictable. Life isn't always predictable, though. Without ABS, I'd still be thinking "fuck, I wish I could somehow brake a little harder, or I might have that deer in my lap," while doing everything else involved in proper threshold braking, in the dark with no headlights, with a deer covering the windshield.
Fuck. All. That.
(And there's the if's. What if the rear brakes lock up early because it's a GM with drum brakes that are cold and wet? What if the right-side tires are on the white line or the rumble and don't have as much grip? I don't have four brake pedals to take care of these issues, so my only option is to reduce braking power to all four wheels. ABS, however, can deal with this stuff pretty well automatically.)
So for everyday driving, it's ABS FTW. For fun or for sport? Meh.
Police: You're going to resist arrest, so we're arresting you for that. Person: I'm not going to resist arrest, you can't arrest me for that. Police: You are resisting arrest right now. Person: No, I'm not. Go right ahead and arrest me. (I had a notion this might happen, so I already sued you for false arrest and you're just validating my claim.)
If you want compare the ABS on your truck, to the same vehicle without ABS, then simply do so:
Go some place controlled, with a long measuring tape or measuring wheel. Pick a speed and a stop line.
Accelerate to your predetermined speed. Hold it until you reach the stop line. Stop with all your might. Measure. Let the brakes cool back down.
Next, disable the ABS system (methods vary, but it's generally trivial), and do the same thing, stopping the truck however you (and your reaction delay) think it should best be stopped.
Compare.
After that, just go buy yourself 2 or 4 new tires to replace the ones that have flat spots on them from your stupid charade. Then come back here and tell what you think of ABS.
The drivers for the EXT3 partition could simply be on the SD card itself, in a FAT32 partition. Easy enough.
But there's other reasons to keep FAT32 around: It's supported by bloody almost every hardware device with a USB port. I keep some videos and MP3s on my Droid, and it's dead simple to plug it into the car stereo or the PS3 and play whatever it is that's on there, or straight into a modern TV to do the same sort of thing. These devices don't support EXT2/3.
And my friends don't want me fucking around with weird (to them, at least) filesystem drivers on their computers so I can do something mundane with my phone like dump a bunch of pictures or video from a party onto their PC while I'm still at their place, instead of fucking around with emailing them later, fucking around with emailing them on the spot, or otherwise fucking around doing such a simple thing.
As to file system access on the iPhone: There is no filesystem access. It is not a USB mass storage device. The normal methods for getting program data to/from the device are either through iTunes or over the network. And the storage is both non-removable and non-upgradable. This is one of the many reasons why it loses.
I don't think I've ever actually played Wipeout, so I guess I didn't realize that keeping track of more than one car would be needed. I did look at the simulator and associated video and it looks like it's only geared for one car. *shrug*
If more than one car is to be run at one time, then it'll be more difficult.
With switches in the track, here's how boost would work:
Have the car run a maximum throttle of, say, 80 percent (limited by the Arduino which is already installed at the control side of things), until boost is activated. Then, up the maximum throttle to 100 for a predetermined period of time after hitting boost. The car needs no smarts for this.
Track ammo and weapons at the control side, too, again using the existing control hardware. Then, use a wireless trigger to fire the weapon. When out of ammo, the controls simply disable the sending of the trigger command (however that happens). The electronics for this needn't be smart. Hacking in the RF section from some other RC car (which will provide at least left/right/off and forward/reverse/off) sounds very cheap, easy, reliable, and low-latency, while giving plenty of control options for whatever weaponry is to be used.
I guess I still see no reason to add a bunch of fidgety logic circuits, let alone microprocessors, to the car.
Put a magnet on the car, and the reed switches under the track.
This keeps the car simple, which may be important since currently it's not modified except to support a camera. Wire up a group of reed switches in parallel for boost, another group in parallel for weapons, another group for something else.
News flash: I don't invest in my house. I own it to live in it, and enjoy it. I modify it to suit me, and I implore my neighbors to do the same with their own houses.
you must be a renter. you need a permit for any modification of your property.
Speak for yourself.
I live in a zoned city of about 35,000 which has no residential building code. At all.
Permit? Inspection? Feh.
Folks here routinely dig their own pools, wire their own houses, and do their own water and gas plumbing work. They replace their own roofs. Install their own windows. Add their own additions.
Somehow, there is not a rash of pool-related deaths. Houses here don't tend to burn themselves to the ground without provcation. They don't crumble in the wind storms that we get here. I don't recall ever hearing about someone being fatally electrocuted in their home around these parts*.
*: I do know of a few fatal or very bad electrocution cases that happened on job sites which were properly permitted. Ironic, isn't it?
If you want to use it, you gotta play by the rules, just like everyone else -- including Google*.
If you don't want to, then don't. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and telling you that you must make WiFi available to yourself.
Just turn it off.
Alternatively, take the tinfoil hat off and get over it. This data is useful to folks, and it's all fair game.
For years, now, my first-gen iPod Touch has done a great job of finding where I am using nothing but Wifi signals, even in my own podunk town -- which was useful when I carried it everywhere to complement my (then) lousy cell phone. But by the time I visited Chicago a few months ago, my GPS-capable Droid did a fine job of figuring out where I was with startling accuracy, within a downtown hotel and without a GPS fix.
Meanwhile, I myself have uploaded a few tens-of-thousands of APs with GPS coordinates to Wigle during my daily wardriving escapades. I have no idea what gets done with that data, but I do enjoy collecting it, and I like looking at the maps it produces.
But, again. If you don't like the game, then don't play it. The price of copper is down right now, so Cat5e is cheap. So just cable your gear up, and nobody will be able to drive by and map it.
*: IIRC, Google got themselves in trouble recently for accidentally recording Wifi traffic when they thought they were only recording location data. Nobody accused them of this; they admitted it all on their own in a very altruist fashion. You've got far more devious organizations than Google to worry about, if you're still insistent on wearing that stupid tin foil hat.
I wish they could offer the same thing for in-person [...]. I really don't like having to hand over my credit card to strangers. Perhaps one day security technology will catch up. Anybody could easily come up with a half-dozen ways to improve security in the process. Sure there are obstacles for implementation, but they're far from insurmountable. It seems like the risks and occurrences have to get worse before they get better.
Good point! As an iphone user, I often use wifi and AT&T does have a great wifi network. The iphone connects automatically to AT&t wifi networks so it's transparent to to user! AT&T wifi is "free" for iphone users! I think that need to be counted in the data usage, as it is part of the data plan.
(quotations added)
Hey, guess what!
My Motorola Droid also talks to AT&T hotspots*! Should we also include my AT&T Wifi data usage, even though I don't have an iPhone or AT&T phone service?
Of course not! It's cellular data usage that is being discussed, not overall data usage!
*: As a Uverse customer, I get "free" access to AT&T's Wifi network when I'm out and about.
It's not just "these days." And it's not just mass-market gear.
I can count on one hand the number of expensive products (think $40,000 to $800,000) that actually worked, as advertised and promised, out of the box. Everything else (I don't think I have enough fingers to count these systems) was broken, even if it'd already been around in production and use for more than a decade.
Fortunately, these low-volume widgets are usually produced by relatively small companies, and it's not a completely harrowing experience to set up a conference call with their tech support, the engineer who designed it, and a responsible party (CEO or owner).
But even at this price range, the first suggestion is always "You're doing it wrong." Which, sometimes, I actually am (I'm not perfect). Sometimes it's a software fix that needs put together, other times it's hardware. One time, we had to send a bunch of expensive PTZ cameras back (which were mounted on 100' towers) for fixes because their internal grounding structure was gorfed such that they kept blowing up without provocation.
In another case, we had engineers from another country on-site for days at a time, fixing real problems that they were initially claimed were impossible. This was successful, thankfully, but once we got it all working correctly they killed the entire (years-old, generally stable, best-of-breed) product line. (WTF?)
Disclaimer: I work with communications and control systems, not the IT stuff typical of Slashdot. My experience with IT things has been pretty good, but then we don't really ever use any non-mass-market IT stuff since we don't ever need to. I'd be interested in knowing if folks ever have similar problems with (say) low-volume/high-end Cisco or NetApp gear, or if my career is uniquely doomed to consist largely of making companies fix the stuff that they sold us.
That's part of the learning to use it bit. You just put the flashlight beside your face, shine it toward the mirror, and aim the mirror at what you want to see.
Manuals are online, and generally easily Googled.
And without seeing the back of the component, having a map of it, or at least being very familiar with its layout, it's very difficult to know which port to plug an HDMI cable into.
But, whatever. You keep fumbling around in the dark and moving stuff around (quite possibly unplugging other things in the process). I'll just keep building gear into spaces where it remains accessible, and using my brain when things aren't easy to reach.
Slashdot Mirror
For instance, before GM had the Passkey system the Camaro was the most stolen car year after year. Once Passkey was introduced it completely dropped off the list.
Wow, those must be some dumb thieves. It's bloody easy to fool Passkey.
IIRC, the widget built into the key only had 16 different possible values. Cut the wires heading to the keyswitch, or under the dash if you're familiar with the layout, and you'd be out of there in under a minute with a substitute resistor.
I did this once to trick Passkey on an '96 Olds, when I helped a friend put a remote starter into it. In that case, I just measured the key with an Ohm meter and used the appropriate resistor. But if I was a thief, I think I'd be keen on using a decade box and just make it work... I might even wire up a start button to save time, and tie the whole thing in with a few clip leads of appropriate gauge.
Yeah, I smoke, too. I'm never far from a lighter (which I guess is what you mean by "firestarting stuff").
I also carry a couple of identical pocket knives. One for abuse, one to keep sharp -- though I try to keep them both sharp, it never really works out. In daily use, the abused one gets to open boxes and the like. The non-abused blade gets to do detailed work. In an emergency, the dull one will cut brush while the sharp one will do self-surgery just fine. Both are half-serrated, which I myself find very useful.
The other tool I have with me at all times is a little flat-blade screwdriver. It's a ~15-year-old Vermont American piece of shit, that I've ground the blade down on a bit. It works in daily use (small screw terminals and the like), as well as Phillips #1 and #2, and most slotted screws up to gigantic, plus some common small Torx sizes. It has also served well as a small lever, a punch, and an awl. It has shown no signs of wear other than a light coating of rust from being in my pocket all that time, and the marks from the bench grinder from the time that I last customized it.
(Sadly, the screwdriver is no longer being produced. I've looked for and tried substitutes, but the steel is always too soft, and goes wonky after the first episode of abuse.)
Right. You're talking about a hunter.
WTF is the "MP3/ video player, and camera" contraption supposed to be useful for? Which part of "need" do those tasks fit into?
(Footnote: My Garmin is lighter than my Droid, and the battery lasts longer with GPS.)
And I think it's time for you to die in a fire.
Don't tell me: You're a safety evangelist.
Listen up. I want things to be as simple as possible. Adding more things onto the thought-process pile in a stressful situation with little potential benefit and a lot of potential detriment is not on my top-10 list of things that I consider positive.
Meanwhile, you're wrong in so many ways that I won't entertain this discourse any longer.
For example: Oh, look! The car is upside down in a ditch, and Joe is bleeding in the back seat, but hey everyone! The deer is OK!!!
And, no, there's no promise that the stopping distance would've been shorter without ABS. I panic, lock the wheels, and slide. Yay! Meanwhile, the rubber (which is a lousy fucking heatsink) turns to muck, and the car slides around.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll keep my friction losses where they belong: Between the pads and the rotor.
Your question was already answered: "stopping the truck however you (and your reaction delay) think it should best be stopped."
No, I'm not an ABS evangelist. I understand and am fully capable of threshold braking. And I have driven the same car, at length, both with and without ABS.
I learned that I prefer having ABS available and working properly.
Why? Because I'm human, I make mistakes. I'm not always 100% focused on my surroundings, and even if I am, I can't see all things at once. My brain does not always operate at 100%. I am susceptible to various degrees of being tired. I think I'm an OK driver most of the time, but I'm also an excellent driver some of the time, and quite certainly a lousy driver the rest of the time. And I have no control over my surroundings during a typical road trip.
So, picture it. I'm driving along a dark, rural divided highway at night and somewhere in my peripheral vision I notice something move that looks like it might be a deer. Based on this fleeting glimpse at the edge of the headlights, I dumped as much speed as I could by mashing the brake pedal into the firewall and kept the wheel straight. The deer, which I could now plainly see running toward the car, then got nailed by the bumper. After breaking off both headlights (they were pop-up) the fucker slid up the hood toward the windshield and all I could think was "fuck, I wish I could somehow brake a little harder, or I might have that deer in my lap."
It didn't make it through the window, which is good. The car didn't survive (bummer), but the folks inside of it were all fine. It stopped in a neat, straight line. This all went down in a second or two -- things happened fast.
Without ABS, things would've played out almost the same. My initial reaction would've been the same: dump speed as quickly as possible. But the method for doing would've been different: I'd have to think. I'd have to brake gradually as the weight transferred to the front axle. I'd have to monitor its progress, using my eyes, ears, inner ears, and brain. I'd have to consider the type of pavement and the condition of it. I'd have to do these things to avoid locking the brakes, possibly resulting in a loss of control, or at least making it harder to keep the car going straight.
And I can do all that stuff. In fact, I really do enjoy playing with non-ABS cars just for all of those reasons, when my surroundings are predictable. Life isn't always predictable, though. Without ABS, I'd still be thinking "fuck, I wish I could somehow brake a little harder, or I might have that deer in my lap," while doing everything else involved in proper threshold braking, in the dark with no headlights, with a deer covering the windshield.
Fuck. All. That.
(And there's the if's. What if the rear brakes lock up early because it's a GM with drum brakes that are cold and wet? What if the right-side tires are on the white line or the rumble and don't have as much grip? I don't have four brake pedals to take care of these issues, so my only option is to reduce braking power to all four wheels. ABS, however, can deal with this stuff pretty well automatically.)
So for everyday driving, it's ABS FTW. For fun or for sport? Meh.
Police: You're going to resist arrest, so we're arresting you for that.
Person: I'm not going to resist arrest, you can't arrest me for that.
Police: You are resisting arrest right now.
Person: No, I'm not. Go right ahead and arrest me. (I had a notion this might happen, so I already sued you for false arrest and you're just validating my claim.)
That's not a test.
If you want compare the ABS on your truck, to the same vehicle without ABS, then simply do so:
Go some place controlled, with a long measuring tape or measuring wheel. Pick a speed and a stop line.
Accelerate to your predetermined speed. Hold it until you reach the stop line. Stop with all your might. Measure. Let the brakes cool back down.
Next, disable the ABS system (methods vary, but it's generally trivial), and do the same thing, stopping the truck however you (and your reaction delay) think it should best be stopped.
Compare.
After that, just go buy yourself 2 or 4 new tires to replace the ones that have flat spots on them from your stupid charade. Then come back here and tell what you think of ABS.
This.
The drivers for the EXT3 partition could simply be on the SD card itself, in a FAT32 partition. Easy enough.
But there's other reasons to keep FAT32 around: It's supported by bloody almost every hardware device with a USB port. I keep some videos and MP3s on my Droid, and it's dead simple to plug it into the car stereo or the PS3 and play whatever it is that's on there, or straight into a modern TV to do the same sort of thing. These devices don't support EXT2/3.
And my friends don't want me fucking around with weird (to them, at least) filesystem drivers on their computers so I can do something mundane with my phone like dump a bunch of pictures or video from a party onto their PC while I'm still at their place, instead of fucking around with emailing them later, fucking around with emailing them on the spot, or otherwise fucking around doing such a simple thing.
As to file system access on the iPhone: There is no filesystem access. It is not a USB mass storage device. The normal methods for getting program data to/from the device are either through iTunes or over the network. And the storage is both non-removable and non-upgradable. This is one of the many reasons why it loses.
I don't think I've ever actually played Wipeout, so I guess I didn't realize that keeping track of more than one car would be needed. I did look at the simulator and associated video and it looks like it's only geared for one car. *shrug*
If more than one car is to be run at one time, then it'll be more difficult.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a cargo ship full of servers, hurling through the Pacific ocean...
Naah.
With switches in the track, here's how boost would work:
Have the car run a maximum throttle of, say, 80 percent (limited by the Arduino which is already installed at the control side of things), until boost is activated. Then, up the maximum throttle to 100 for a predetermined period of time after hitting boost. The car needs no smarts for this.
Track ammo and weapons at the control side, too, again using the existing control hardware. Then, use a wireless trigger to fire the weapon. When out of ammo, the controls simply disable the sending of the trigger command (however that happens). The electronics for this needn't be smart. Hacking in the RF section from some other RC car (which will provide at least left/right/off and forward/reverse/off) sounds very cheap, easy, reliable, and low-latency, while giving plenty of control options for whatever weaponry is to be used.
I guess I still see no reason to add a bunch of fidgety logic circuits, let alone microprocessors, to the car.
Put a magnet on the car, and the reed switches under the track.
This keeps the car simple, which may be important since currently it's not modified except to support a camera. Wire up a group of reed switches in parallel for boost, another group in parallel for weapons, another group for something else.
Wire is cheap.
Meh.
Magnets in the track + Hall effect sensor in the car (or the opposite arrangement) = boost.
RFID? Why bother?
(Kids, these days...)
Indeed.
News flash: I don't invest in my house. I own it to live in it, and enjoy it. I modify it to suit me, and I implore my neighbors to do the same with their own houses.
Speak for yourself.
I live in a zoned city of about 35,000 which has no residential building code. At all.
Permit? Inspection? Feh.
Folks here routinely dig their own pools, wire their own houses, and do their own water and gas plumbing work. They replace their own roofs. Install their own windows. Add their own additions.
Somehow, there is not a rash of pool-related deaths. Houses here don't tend to burn themselves to the ground without provcation. They don't crumble in the wind storms that we get here. I don't recall ever hearing about someone being fatally electrocuted in their home around these parts*.
*: I do know of a few fatal or very bad electrocution cases that happened on job sites which were properly permitted. Ironic, isn't it?
Ugh. It seems that I missed a /i in there someplace. Please moderate accordingly.
Worried? Why would you worry about that?
It's public spectrum.
If you want to use it, you gotta play by the rules, just like everyone else -- including Google*.
If you don't want to, then don't. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and telling you that you must make WiFi available to yourself.
Just turn it off.
Alternatively, take the tinfoil hat off and get over it. This data is useful to folks, and it's all fair game.
For years, now, my first-gen iPod Touch has done a great job of finding where I am using nothing but Wifi signals, even in my own podunk town -- which was useful when I carried it everywhere to complement my (then) lousy cell phone. But by the time I visited Chicago a few months ago, my GPS-capable Droid did a fine job of figuring out where I was with startling accuracy, within a downtown hotel and without a GPS fix.
Meanwhile, I myself have uploaded a few tens-of-thousands of APs with GPS coordinates to Wigle during my daily wardriving escapades. I have no idea what gets done with that data, but I do enjoy collecting it, and I like looking at the maps it produces.
But, again. If you don't like the game, then don't play it. The price of copper is down right now, so Cat5e is cheap. So just cable your gear up, and nobody will be able to drive by and map it.
*: IIRC, Google got themselves in trouble recently for accidentally recording Wifi traffic when they thought they were only recording location data. Nobody accused them of this; they admitted it all on their own in a very altruist fashion. You've got far more devious organizations than Google to worry about, if you're still insistent on wearing that stupid tin foil hat.
Cash.
(quotations added)
Hey, guess what!
My Motorola Droid also talks to AT&T hotspots*! Should we also include my AT&T Wifi data usage, even though I don't have an iPhone or AT&T phone service?
Of course not! It's cellular data usage that is being discussed, not overall data usage!
*: As a Uverse customer, I get "free" access to AT&T's Wifi network when I'm out and about.
This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because I choose not to surrender my PC to a convicted monopolist.
I still have a few machines on which I choose to run a filesystem written by a convicted murderer.
It's not just "these days." And it's not just mass-market gear.
I can count on one hand the number of expensive products (think $40,000 to $800,000) that actually worked, as advertised and promised, out of the box. Everything else (I don't think I have enough fingers to count these systems) was broken, even if it'd already been around in production and use for more than a decade.
Fortunately, these low-volume widgets are usually produced by relatively small companies, and it's not a completely harrowing experience to set up a conference call with their tech support, the engineer who designed it, and a responsible party (CEO or owner).
But even at this price range, the first suggestion is always "You're doing it wrong." Which, sometimes, I actually am (I'm not perfect). Sometimes it's a software fix that needs put together, other times it's hardware. One time, we had to send a bunch of expensive PTZ cameras back (which were mounted on 100' towers) for fixes because their internal grounding structure was gorfed such that they kept blowing up without provocation.
In another case, we had engineers from another country on-site for days at a time, fixing real problems that they were initially claimed were impossible. This was successful, thankfully, but once we got it all working correctly they killed the entire (years-old, generally stable, best-of-breed) product line. (WTF?)
Disclaimer: I work with communications and control systems, not the IT stuff typical of Slashdot. My experience with IT things has been pretty good, but then we don't really ever use any non-mass-market IT stuff since we don't ever need to. I'd be interested in knowing if folks ever have similar problems with (say) low-volume/high-end Cisco or NetApp gear, or if my career is uniquely doomed to consist largely of making companies fix the stuff that they sold us.
That's part of the learning to use it bit. You just put the flashlight beside your face, shine it toward the mirror, and aim the mirror at what you want to see.
Manuals are online, and generally easily Googled.
And without seeing the back of the component, having a map of it, or at least being very familiar with its layout, it's very difficult to know which port to plug an HDMI cable into.
But, whatever. You keep fumbling around in the dark and moving stuff around (quite possibly unplugging other things in the process). I'll just keep building gear into spaces where it remains accessible, and using my brain when things aren't easy to reach.
To each his own, I guess.