You sure didnt sem to have a problem 15-20 years ago. As you would have been 12 the last time you used it, I'm sure you werent contributing the tax moeny that funded it. Public libraries are repositories of knowledge, and a library is a much superior resource then the Internet on most subjects. Consider what you pay now as settling your debt from your childhood use. And if you ever have children, I hope you will make large use of your library, because I'd hate to think there were kids running around as ignorant and short sighted as you.
Yeah Damn that Bush and his Republican cronies. They have even taken to enslaving democrats and making them produce pro-spam legislation like these (from the MSNBC Article):
"Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, called the effort "an important first step in restoring consumers' control over their inboxes."
" "It's not going to solve all the problems, but it's the first real step," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The public is demanding something. It's going to happen. We're going to get it done.""
If we had a Democrat President, I'm sure he would've veto-d the legislation, seeing how it passed on a narrow 392 - 5 vote. Why I bet he walked right into congress and proposed and sponsored the bill himself, oh wait he can't do that. He did have Wyden, Ron - (D - OR), Breaux, John - (D - LA), Landrieu, Mary - (D - LA), and Schumer, Charles - (D - NY) to do his dirty work and co-sponsor the bill. Yep just mean old GW (who hasn't even had a chance to sign it into law yet) and his friends to beat up on the little guy.
Funny how under "republican rule" the PATRIOT act and the DMCA were passed by almost unanimous votes. Especially since congress is split practically 50/50, with only a tiny margin giving Republicans majority. Even a president's veto couldn't of stopped that. It's the true the Republican party is a twisted perversion of it's former self, and the current leadership has a lot more to do with "conservatism" then the tradtional republican state's right stance.
We have those as well. Most serious law firms ( read non ambulance chasers) also donate a good amount of time to pro bono work. But it will wind up costing him in the long run, because a drawn out legal battle if nothing else means time away from school and work, not to mention his social life. Unless your socialist hellhole has discovered a way for you to defend yourself in court without actually being there.
The army does just fine without power, you think they only fought when the lights were on in Irag? Not to mention most businesses shut down, so most large targets are empty. If you could manage to get a large bomb on the power supply, you would probably cause more damage using the bomb on a building. The real revelation is how New Yorkers (the ones they let whine on tv anyway) are apparently big cry babies. Losing power doesnt mean you have to sit in the dark incapable of action.
A better analogy is if you dressed like a bank employee (minus the logo or a few other minor details), walked up to someone, handed them a bank form of some sort, and asked them to fill it out. The only difference is on the internet you dont get arrested the first time someone doesnt fall for it.
This post, or one almost exactly like it, gets dragged out every time something new or fun or interesting gets posted that might just involve sitting down for a whole 5 minutes. Imagine what lazy lard asses we all must be, with no life to be interested by things that dont all have to do with going outside and being a fascinating outgoing social person. Thank god NineNine was here to show us how we have been missing out on life cause we dared spend a few minutes relaxing in front of a computer. Im glad someone is with lots of hot girlfriends and an important business can take time out of his day to patrol slashdot and show us the error of our ways. In other words, shut the fuck up, Jackass. Just because you play a video game, or write software as a hobby, or whatever, doesn't mean you dont have a life. People doing what they enjoy, whatever it is, is no business of yours. Judging from your post, I get the feeling all you care about is how other people see you. "several hot girlfreinds"? I'd take a real relationship with an ugly girl over some shallow posing with women I met in some bar. Some of us don't care, and if we happen to like sitting in front of a computer, it doesnt make you morally superior.
Homestarrunner works fine in firebird. Make sure you have the flash plugins installed and turned on. In fact the only websites Ive found so far that dont work withe firebird are ones that use the browser id to intentionally block all non IE browsers. I generally decide I didnt want to go to those sites anyway.
ATI doesnt actually produce their cards. They develop a reference implementation and license it out to manufacturers. One of the few places the manufactureres are allowed to differentiate from the reference model is the cooling system. This means you get what you pay for. The cheapest cooling solutions come with the cheapest cards. The blame for your problem here is entirely with Apple, for choosing a crappy fan. It's also worth pointing out that the fans arent always neccesary. The fan on my Abit Geforce 4 Ti 4200 died and it ran for months before I even noticed.
We have the patent system on our side for that one. We have the benefit of being extremely broad, while they are stuck with a specific implementation of sleaze.
Sleazy tactics like this aren't going to end. Theres only one solution. We need to sit around and think up every sleazy, disgusting, wrong, and dishonorable tactic someone could use to pervert the internet and it's standards to make a buck. We take that list, and patent it.
Hahaha You think those maps are right? Why do you this they send out survey crews whenever they do any sort of construction? I'll give you a hint, according to the city maps, theres a canal where a friend of mine's house is. The canal doesnt exist, and never did, as the house has been there before the map and most of the roads around it were built. Ask anyone that works from a power company or gas company how often the city maps are correct. This approach combined with sattelite photography is probably the only way to get realistic maps.
I think thats a wrong interpretation of the story (and I'm an aethiest). Take it in context. The Jews dislike the Samaritans (and just about anyone else not jewish) and generally, in their pride considered themselves superiors to the "gentiles" and Samaratins in particular. The man is wounded (doesn't say if he is jewish or not) and left to die. He is passed by a priest, the moral authority of jewish culture, and ignored. That propably wouldn't have been to surprising to occur in real life, the priests at the time considered themselves the superior of the superior for their piety, and thus wouldnt look twice at lowly man (doesn't say he is jewish) dieing on the side of the road. He is too important. But a Samaritan, who the audience of the story wouild have reviled, especially the priesthood, stopped and helped him. If the story was just about the mercy shown by the Samaritan, why include the priest at all? Jesus was answering the question, in response to telling them to love their neighbor, "And who is my neighbour?". He ends the story asking them "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?". He is telling them it is better to be a lowly samaritan who does what's right then it is to be a stuck up priest. He is using their own ideas about Samaratins agaisnt them. If you asked any jew if they would rather be a Samaritan or a priest, they would choose priest, as that is a position of high status and respect, but they should be humble like the samaritan, and help people in need because it's right, not because its expected of you or your position. Even if you aren't religous, I think the story is a good one, and the lesson well learnt. The reference to the "good samaritan" here is especially appropriate. The man here coud've said screw Microsoft, they are a huge rich company they can handle their own problems. He instead chose to help, at cost to himself, to help others, despite their status.
You sir are full of crap. Apple's own Appleworks (formerly Clarisworks) has come with every Mac since longer then I can remember. It sports excellent.doc support, and for a long time (pre Office 98) was better at working with Office documents then Office. In the future, when trolling for mod points, do a litte research. The only people who bought Office for Mac were office workers who needed 100% Office compatibility. Only now that MS has gotten their act together and released versions of Office for Mac that are arguably superior to the PC version has it become popular(shows you what a little competition in the market place can do). As for the 150 million, that was just good business. Microsoft needs at least one "competitor", and that 150 million also got them IE installed on new Macs. And before you call me a zealot, I'm a PC user who's used both platforms and believes in evualating things on merit and not the opinions of trolls on/.
You make several accusations about the article's bias. But instead of giving us the articl and letting the readers make that judgement, or even making a logical argument for why he is wrong, you instead attack the author, and tell us how we should feel about the article. Anyone that reads slashdot can probably pick out the (alleged) MS bias by themselves. Keep your opinions to your damn self if you arent willing to back them up.
Or, forget all this crap, and dont even bother holding down the shift key. Do what I've been doing for years, and disable autorun period right after you install windows. Heres how to do it in XP Pro(shamelessly stolen from the first site google gave me): To Disable CD autoplay, completely, in Windows XP Pro
1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC
2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.
3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.
Turns out Microsoft has been shipping a circumvention device all these years. Anyone who lets a cd run whatever it pleases is a fool anyway.
"Now if only technology could some how re-direct pharmaceutical r&d into actually curing diseases (when was the last time that happened, like 50 years ago?)"
That's a load of crap, troll. Think for just a second and you'll realize this statement is horribly wrong, and so are all the comedians and political pundits that like to spout if off. The reason few diseases are "cured" is because the vast majority of diseases without a cure already are viruses. A massive number of diseases were cured when antibiotics were developed, but that doesnt help against viruses. Killing a virus is an order of magnitude harder. Furthermore prescription drugs can only be patented for a relatively short time (why we have generic drugs). The first company to come up with a way to reliably cure viruses stands to make millions more then they could ever hope in treatment drugs. Treatments which cost millions to develop are often replaced by new more effective treatments in short order. If they released a safe, effective cure, the market for it would be huge, and more benefitial then blowing billions to be one of a hundred potential treatments. As for vaccines, imagine how much money would be made from holding the patent for the HIV vaccine? It'd be like a license to print money. The real reason drugs cost so much is the massive R+D costs, plus the massive FDA certification costs, plus the often large production costs (Many new drugs are extremely volatile and difficult to produce in mass), plus the need to recoup all those costs in the short period in which they are the preferred treatment. Drug companies aren't saints by any means, but it is just good business sense for them to develop and release the best medicines within reach of our technology.
I guess im crazy but I encourage Bush 100% on this. Starving the federal goverment into cutting programs seems like a great idea. I'm probably what you would consider upper working class/lower middle class. As a child I work have been considered mid-to low working class. I know what it's like to need money. But when your struggling for money, the last thing you want to do is lose half your pay check to taxes to support inneffecient government programs that only a tiny minority of the population qualify for. Many of the programs designed to help lower income families are responsible for creating the need for them. Further more a massive portion of the Federal budget winds up going to the states in the forms of grants and pork projects. It is a much tougher sell passing tax increases at a local level and theres a reason for that. Democracy works best when you have politicians that are persoanlly accountable to the people they serve. Turning over your personal accountability to the state and letting them make all you decisions for you is the fastest way to destroy a democracy. Im an independent, but I'm sick of this mindless republicans bad/dems good mindset. Voting the party line gets you nowhere. At one point the Republican party stood for strict constructuralism (including the Bill of rights and the whole rights not expressly granted to the state reserved to the citizens part) and strong state goverment. Unfortunatly the party leadership has been hijacked by religous righters and others who try to hide behind the term "conservative" and who really mean "everyone acts and believes just like me". I realize I've gone completely off topic so please mod accordingly.
Is there a way to mod the last half of this article -1 offtopic? Training and testing accidents are the norm for any new plane or helicopter, especially something as innovative as the Osprey. Look at how many people died to make the Harrier. A google search for Harrier deaths will reveal plenty of evidence if you don't believe me. I'm sure plenty will die trying to get ornithopters off the ground (if they ever get built).
I for one hope the future of space travel lies not in idiotic competions between countries to determine who has the biggest "rocket" but in multi-national programs where engineers and scientists call the shots, not politicians pushing an agenda. This "race" mentality, although it stimulates progress, leads to mistakes.
They make those, only cost a couple dollars. Don't do 3d to well, but you get what you pay for. This is a product designed to fill a niche, people who want a good card thats quiet and are willing to pay for it. If you aren't willing to pay for it, go buy a cheaper, noisy card, or a really cheap completely silent card. If there isnt a suffecient market for this the product will fail. And I dont know what you complaining about cost anyway. I bought my first voodoo 2 for over $200. I bought a Geforce 4 ti for around a hundred. Seems like they are listening after all.
I find it interesting you think designing software is more difficult then designing a car part. Designing a car part has a lot of the same problems as software design. An engineer is given a set of specifications regarding size and wieght and function and so forth. He has to design said part within a tight budget, within said specs, and the whole time he is designing it it's nothing more then a model in a cad program. Said part has to interface with the rest of the car ( which is also still in the design phase). During development specs can change. This is all very simliar to software design. After initial design the engineer gets a prototype, and starts testing. Most of this testing isnt done on the actual final car, but on mockups or similiar cars. During this time he has to try and simulate the next 10 years of wear and tear, taking into account malfunctions in other systems. He has to make sure that when (not if) the part fails, it is not dangerous to the occupant. This whole process is similiar to software design. The reason recalls are so rare compared to software patches is the intensity of testing. When a programmer makes a mistake and doesnt catch it, the worst that can happen is time and data are lost. When an engineer makes a mistake and it isnt caught, people can die. Designing a program of any complexity without a single bug is next to impossible. Proper testing prior to release can catch the vast majority of bugs. Don't blame the current state of software development on the innate complexity of the task, but on the ridiculous disregard given to quality control by the entire industry. To be honest I dont have a problem with this. Software only needs to be good enough for the task. Noone gets hurt when Word crashes.
Look at canadian taxes. Every person pays for universal healthcare sooner or later, they arent getting something for nothing. Add into that the fact that if you are wealthy, and are willing to spend the money, you still get the same level of care (including huge waiting lists for elective surgery). There used to be an old scam where canadians would come to the U.S., have their surgery, and go back to bypass the waiting list. Universal healthcare doesnt save you money, it justs makes the money flow through more bureacracy's (which costs money) before it gets to you.
Slashdot Mirror
You sure didnt sem to have a problem 15-20 years ago. As you would have been 12 the last time you used it, I'm sure you werent contributing the tax moeny that funded it. Public libraries are repositories of knowledge, and a library is a much superior resource then the Internet on most subjects. Consider what you pay now as settling your debt from your childhood use. And if you ever have children, I hope you will make large use of your library, because I'd hate to think there were kids running around as ignorant and short sighted as you.
Yeah Damn that Bush and his Republican cronies. They have even taken to enslaving democrats and making them produce pro-spam legislation like these (from the MSNBC Article):
"Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, called the effort "an important first step in restoring consumers' control over their inboxes."
" "It's not going to solve all the problems, but it's the first real step," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The public is demanding something. It's going to happen. We're going to get it done.""
If we had a Democrat President, I'm sure he would've veto-d the legislation, seeing how it passed on a narrow 392 - 5 vote. Why I bet he walked right into congress and proposed and sponsored the bill himself, oh wait he can't do that. He did have Wyden, Ron - (D - OR), Breaux, John - (D - LA), Landrieu, Mary - (D - LA), and Schumer, Charles - (D - NY) to do his dirty work and co-sponsor the bill. Yep just mean old GW (who hasn't even had a chance to sign it into law yet) and his friends to beat up on the little guy.
Funny how under "republican rule" the PATRIOT act and the DMCA were passed by almost unanimous votes. Especially since congress is split practically 50/50, with only a tiny margin giving Republicans majority. Even a president's veto couldn't of stopped that. It's the true the Republican party is a twisted perversion of it's former self, and the current leadership has a lot more to do with "conservatism" then the tradtional republican state's right stance.
We have those as well. Most serious law firms ( read non ambulance chasers) also donate a good amount of time to pro bono work. But it will wind up costing him in the long run, because a drawn out legal battle if nothing else means time away from school and work, not to mention his social life. Unless your socialist hellhole has discovered a way for you to defend yourself in court without actually being there.
Is it just me, or does this article sound like it was written by a five year old?
The army does just fine without power, you think they only fought when the lights were on in Irag? Not to mention most businesses shut down, so most large targets are empty. If you could manage to get a large bomb on the power supply, you would probably cause more damage using the bomb on a building. The real revelation is how New Yorkers (the ones they let whine on tv anyway) are apparently big cry babies. Losing power doesnt mean you have to sit in the dark incapable of action.
Care to back that up? Did you work at Apple? Have you met the coders? Comments like yours get modded down because they aren't backed up by facts.
A better analogy is if you dressed like a bank employee (minus the logo or a few other minor details), walked up to someone, handed them a bank form of some sort, and asked them to fill it out. The only difference is on the internet you dont get arrested the first time someone doesnt fall for it.
This post, or one almost exactly like it, gets dragged out every time something new or fun or interesting gets posted that might just involve sitting down for a whole 5 minutes. Imagine what lazy lard asses we all must be, with no life to be interested by things that dont all have to do with going outside and being a fascinating outgoing social person. Thank god NineNine was here to show us how we have been missing out on life cause we dared spend a few minutes relaxing in front of a computer. Im glad someone is with lots of hot girlfriends and an important business can take time out of his day to patrol slashdot and show us the error of our ways. In other words, shut the fuck up, Jackass. Just because you play a video game, or write software as a hobby, or whatever, doesn't mean you dont have a life. People doing what they enjoy, whatever it is, is no business of yours. Judging from your post, I get the feeling all you care about is how other people see you. "several hot girlfreinds"? I'd take a real relationship with an ugly girl over some shallow posing with women I met in some bar. Some of us don't care, and if we happen to like sitting in front of a computer, it doesnt make you morally superior.
Homestarrunner works fine in firebird. Make sure you have the flash plugins installed and turned on. In fact the only websites Ive found so far that dont work withe firebird are ones that use the browser id to intentionally block all non IE browsers. I generally decide I didnt want to go to those sites anyway.
ATI doesnt actually produce their cards. They develop a reference implementation and license it out to manufacturers. One of the few places the manufactureres are allowed to differentiate from the reference model is the cooling system. This means you get what you pay for. The cheapest cooling solutions come with the cheapest cards. The blame for your problem here is entirely with Apple, for choosing a crappy fan. It's also worth pointing out that the fans arent always neccesary. The fan on my Abit Geforce 4 Ti 4200 died and it ran for months before I even noticed.
We have the patent system on our side for that one. We have the benefit of being extremely broad, while they are stuck with a specific implementation of sleaze.
Sleazy tactics like this aren't going to end. Theres only one solution. We need to sit around and think up every sleazy, disgusting, wrong, and dishonorable tactic someone could use to pervert the internet and it's standards to make a buck. We take that list, and patent it.
Hahaha You think those maps are right? Why do you this they send out survey crews whenever they do any sort of construction? I'll give you a hint, according to the city maps, theres a canal where a friend of mine's house is. The canal doesnt exist, and never did, as the house has been there before the map and most of the roads around it were built. Ask anyone that works from a power company or gas company how often the city maps are correct. This approach combined with sattelite photography is probably the only way to get realistic maps.
I think thats a wrong interpretation of the story (and I'm an aethiest). Take it in context. The Jews dislike the Samaritans (and just about anyone else not jewish) and generally, in their pride considered themselves superiors to the "gentiles" and Samaratins in particular. The man is wounded (doesn't say if he is jewish or not) and left to die. He is passed by a priest, the moral authority of jewish culture, and ignored. That propably wouldn't have been to surprising to occur in real life, the priests at the time considered themselves the superior of the superior for their piety, and thus wouldnt look twice at lowly man (doesn't say he is jewish) dieing on the side of the road. He is too important. But a Samaritan, who the audience of the story wouild have reviled, especially the priesthood, stopped and helped him. If the story was just about the mercy shown by the Samaritan, why include the priest at all? Jesus was answering the question, in response to telling them to love their neighbor, "And who is my neighbour?". He ends the story asking them "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?". He is telling them it is better to be a lowly samaritan who does what's right then it is to be a stuck up priest. He is using their own ideas about Samaratins agaisnt them. If you asked any jew if they would rather be a Samaritan or a priest, they would choose priest, as that is a position of high status and respect, but they should be humble like the samaritan, and help people in need because it's right, not because its expected of you or your position. Even if you aren't religous, I think the story is a good one, and the lesson well learnt. The reference to the "good samaritan" here is especially appropriate. The man here coud've said screw Microsoft, they are a huge rich company they can handle their own problems. He instead chose to help, at cost to himself, to help others, despite their status.
You sir are full of crap. Apple's own Appleworks (formerly Clarisworks) has come with every Mac since longer then I can remember. It sports excellent .doc support, and for a long time (pre Office 98) was better at working with Office documents then Office. In the future, when trolling for mod points, do a litte research. The only people who bought Office for Mac were office workers who needed 100% Office compatibility. Only now that MS has gotten their act together and released versions of Office for Mac that are arguably superior to the PC version has it become popular(shows you what a little competition in the market place can do). As for the 150 million, that was just good business. Microsoft needs at least one "competitor", and that 150 million also got them IE installed on new Macs. And before you call me a zealot, I'm a PC user who's used both platforms and believes in evualating things on merit and not the opinions of trolls on /.
You make several accusations about the article's bias. But instead of giving us the articl and letting the readers make that judgement, or even making a logical argument for why he is wrong, you instead attack the author, and tell us how we should feel about the article. Anyone that reads slashdot can probably pick out the (alleged) MS bias by themselves. Keep your opinions to your damn self if you arent willing to back them up.
Or, forget all this crap, and dont even bother holding down the shift key. Do what I've been doing for years, and disable autorun period right after you install windows. Heres how to do it in XP Pro(shamelessly stolen from the first site google gave me):
To Disable CD autoplay, completely, in Windows XP Pro
1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC
2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.
3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.
Turns out Microsoft has been shipping a circumvention device all these years. Anyone who lets a cd run whatever it pleases is a fool anyway.
"Now if only technology could some how re-direct pharmaceutical r&d into actually curing diseases (when was the last time that happened, like 50 years ago?)"
That's a load of crap, troll. Think for just a second and you'll realize this statement is horribly wrong, and so are all the comedians and political pundits that like to spout if off. The reason few diseases are "cured" is because the vast majority of diseases without a cure already are viruses. A massive number of diseases were cured when antibiotics were developed, but that doesnt help against viruses. Killing a virus is an order of magnitude harder. Furthermore prescription drugs can only be patented for a relatively short time (why we have generic drugs). The first company to come up with a way to reliably cure viruses stands to make millions more then they could ever hope in treatment drugs. Treatments which cost millions to develop are often replaced by new more effective treatments in short order. If they released a safe, effective cure, the market for it would be huge, and more benefitial then blowing billions to be one of a hundred potential treatments. As for vaccines, imagine how much money would be made from holding the patent for the HIV vaccine? It'd be like a license to print money. The real reason drugs cost so much is the massive R+D costs, plus the massive FDA certification costs, plus the often large production costs (Many new drugs are extremely volatile and difficult to produce in mass), plus the need to recoup all those costs in the short period in which they are the preferred treatment. Drug companies aren't saints by any means, but it is just good business sense for them to develop and release the best medicines within reach of our technology.
I guess im crazy but I encourage Bush 100% on this. Starving the federal goverment into cutting programs seems like a great idea. I'm probably what you would consider upper working class/lower middle class. As a child I work have been considered mid-to low working class. I know what it's like to need money. But when your struggling for money, the last thing you want to do is lose half your pay check to taxes to support inneffecient government programs that only a tiny minority of the population qualify for. Many of the programs designed to help lower income families are responsible for creating the need for them. Further more a massive portion of the Federal budget winds up going to the states in the forms of grants and pork projects. It is a much tougher sell passing tax increases at a local level and theres a reason for that. Democracy works best when you have politicians that are persoanlly accountable to the people they serve. Turning over your personal accountability to the state and letting them make all you decisions for you is the fastest way to destroy a democracy. Im an independent, but I'm sick of this mindless republicans bad/dems good mindset. Voting the party line gets you nowhere. At one point the Republican party stood for strict constructuralism (including the Bill of rights and the whole rights not expressly granted to the state reserved to the citizens part) and strong state goverment. Unfortunatly the party leadership has been hijacked by religous righters and others who try to hide behind the term "conservative" and who really mean "everyone acts and believes just like me". I realize I've gone completely off topic so please mod accordingly.
Is there a way to mod the last half of this article -1 offtopic? Training and testing accidents are the norm for any new plane or helicopter, especially something as innovative as the Osprey. Look at how many people died to make the Harrier. A google search for Harrier deaths will reveal plenty of evidence if you don't believe me. I'm sure plenty will die trying to get ornithopters off the ground (if they ever get built).
I for one hope the future of space travel lies not in idiotic competions between countries to determine who has the biggest "rocket" but in multi-national programs where engineers and scientists call the shots, not politicians pushing an agenda. This "race" mentality, although it stimulates progress, leads to mistakes.
They make those, only cost a couple dollars. Don't do 3d to well, but you get what you pay for. This is a product designed to fill a niche, people who want a good card thats quiet and are willing to pay for it. If you aren't willing to pay for it, go buy a cheaper, noisy card, or a really cheap completely silent card. If there isnt a suffecient market for this the product will fail. And I dont know what you complaining about cost anyway. I bought my first voodoo 2 for over $200. I bought a Geforce 4 ti for around a hundred. Seems like they are listening after all.
I find it interesting you think designing software is more difficult then designing a car part. Designing a car part has a lot of the same problems as software design. An engineer is given a set of specifications regarding size and wieght and function and so forth. He has to design said part within a tight budget, within said specs, and the whole time he is designing it it's nothing more then a model in a cad program. Said part has to interface with the rest of the car ( which is also still in the design phase). During development specs can change. This is all very simliar to software design. After initial design the engineer gets a prototype, and starts testing. Most of this testing isnt done on the actual final car, but on mockups or similiar cars. During this time he has to try and simulate the next 10 years of wear and tear, taking into account malfunctions in other systems. He has to make sure that when (not if) the part fails, it is not dangerous to the occupant. This whole process is similiar to software design. The reason recalls are so rare compared to software patches is the intensity of testing. When a programmer makes a mistake and doesnt catch it, the worst that can happen is time and data are lost. When an engineer makes a mistake and it isnt caught, people can die. Designing a program of any complexity without a single bug is next to impossible. Proper testing prior to release can catch the vast majority of bugs. Don't blame the current state of software development on the innate complexity of the task, but on the ridiculous disregard given to quality control by the entire industry. To be honest I dont have a problem with this. Software only needs to be good enough for the task. Noone gets hurt when Word crashes.
Look at canadian taxes. Every person pays for universal healthcare sooner or later, they arent getting something for nothing. Add into that the fact that if you are wealthy, and are willing to spend the money, you still get the same level of care (including huge waiting lists for elective surgery). There used to be an old scam where canadians would come to the U.S., have their surgery, and go back to bypass the waiting list. Universal healthcare doesnt save you money, it justs makes the money flow through more bureacracy's (which costs money) before it gets to you.