You're right that Jobs didn't invent anything; he was Apple's sales/marketing leader, and Wozniak was solely responsible for the Apple 1 & Apple II. However, the Apple I was their first computer, released in April 1976 (the PET came out in January 1977), and it *did* have some crucial features before competing systems. To quote Wikipedia:
Unlike other hobbyist computers of its day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a fully assembled circuit board containing about 60+ chips.... The Apple I's built-in computer terminal circuitry was distinctive. All one needed was a keyboard and an inexpensive television set. Competing machines such as the Altair 8800 generally were programmed with front-mounted toggle switches and used indicator lights (red LEDs, most commonly) for output, and had to be extended with separate hardware to allow connection to a computer terminal or a teletypewriter machine. This made the Apple I an innovative machine for its day.
FWIW while I wasn't born until shortly after the PET came out, I've been heavily into "retro-computing" and industry history/lore since I was a young teen.
Icons that are a good representation of their function and toolbar customization together provide the same easily-recognized features as a sidebar in a much smaller space. If users are having trouble to the point of needing labels after a few uses, that suggests that the icon designers focused too heavily on being attractive or trendy rather than clearly representing their function. It's a sadly common problem in modern-day software, regardless of its economic or source status -- a shame, since there's no lack of info on good UI design.
I use OpenOffice rather than Calligra, but I got to try out the sidebar approach as OO got basically the same thing in last week's release. The sidebar/text-instead-of-icons approach is okay for someone that periodically does word-processing with one document at a time -- not for people that wish to conserve screen space (e.g. to compare versions, refer to notes, or keep other programs visible) or that use it often enough to know their icons/shortcuts.
Personally, I want *any* WP window to be focused on my document and let me use the rest of my 1920x1080 23" screen for other things -- show another file, access files, use my playlist, or even stare at my wallpaper while thinking something over. As I've learned the icons I use, customized my toolbar and know basic keyboard shortcuts, it seems odd to use a relatively wide vertical stripe of my WP window to house dialog boxes that I either rarely use or that have the same stuff that's in my toolbar.
A few OO screenshots to illustrate: My typical setup vs. OO4 w/Properties sidebar Mine w/Styles dialog vs. OO w/Styles sidebar Notes: That setup takes up around half of my screen, and "Styles" always looks nearly that empty as I only use 1-3 styles per document. (Have to enjoy the irony in the large sidebar-choosing icons being attractive but not terribly well-designed as UI elements, given they presumably exist in part because people can't identify the normal icons...)
Where I live, US 8-10 women's sell out first, and men have just as many shoes out & available. As for the rest, your friend (or possibly you?) really need update your stereotypes -- the "all women love to shop and own like a million shoes, all men hate to shop" stuff is so outdated that it's absurd. (I can't figure out why so much more of the geek community believes that kind of stuff than regular people do.)
Some people from both genders love shopping for new clothes and/or shoes, and some dislike it. Most people mislead others into believing they fit one gender stereotype or another for fear they won't be accepted or fit in, including shopping or clothes/shoe ownership. I don't know many fellow mid-thirtysomethings that do it, though, and from what I've heard/seen, it's even more rare in the folks younger than us.
FWIW my feet are US size 9.5, I own 5 pairs total (gym, around the house & everyday casual sneakers, a generic low-heel women's formal shoe & a generic unisex office-style formal one), and I hate shopping for clothes/shoes.
The trick is to insist that they use a butterfly needle, both based on my experience with veins damaged in childhood from tons of blood draws & IVs, and that of a nurse that advised me as a kid during one needlephobic freakout. Winged needles go in at an extremely shallow angle that's much less likely to make the vein roll or misbehave, they're held by the "wings" at the base of the needle with far more accuracy, and the syringe is at the other end of a long tube so it won't move the needle when they switch vials; IME as an adult, they also don't cause as much damage or scar tissue.
I've been looking into WD TV lately, and it's one of the options I'm seriously considering getting for my mother, as we switched from cable to watching online & downloading years ago. She has a Roku, but the interface is fairly exasperating and it's only able to show the pre-defined sources it came with; AFAIK it can't discover (or be sent) videos across our network, and trying to manually set it up to access a system with that interface just might result in me throwing it out a window in frustration.
Simply Mepis on my 8y/o laptop plays Flash vids in Firefox with no problem... Maybe it's your distro or the browser you're using?
FWIW I don't recall whether I had to install the plugin manually or if it came OOTB, but it would've been no big deal if I did -- just a matter of either grabbing the.deb from Adobe & installing it or searching for and selecting it in Synaptic Package Manager. Shouldn't take more than five minutes, unless my cheapo DSL connection was being even slower than usual.
I wonder if it would've been mentioned if he was from another party, or if the assumption is that Slashdotters (or geeks) virtually all view libertarianism in a positive light.
It was designed to keep the rich people rich, and the poor people poor. You know, the logical consequences of unrestricted corporate freedom. And if that's not the Libertarian ideal, then what is?
From what I've seen, most geek libertarians figure either that they're only non-rich because the big bad government is in the way (while everyone else is non-rich due to their own faults/choices) -- or, alternately, that everyone hard-working and smart would quickly become affluent without a government to 'interfere.'
Check out the guy's other posts -- they're all like that for some reason. I've been wondering what the deal is for a while now, especially since it's rare that anyone seems to notice anything awry.
Bingo. It's grown year-round here in California, which AFAIK is the primary source of broccoli for North America. There has to be some difference (age? time since being cut?) between the broccoli sent to other areas versus sold here in local stores, though -- the stuff here rarely has a markedly unpleasant or bitter flavor, especially when cooked, and nobody I knew growing up had a real problem with it more than any other veggie.
You should've tried plugging a 2-wire audio cable from a motherboard's speaker output pins up to a soundcard's slightly-different-looking input pins -- as I learned in the late 90s, doing that and powering the system on results in a bright flash, the smell of an electrical fire, and one thoroughly blackened wire.
AFAIK, that isn't irony, but what kind of "sacrifices" are you talking about? The word "hero" generally refers to somebody that chooses to act in the greater good despite a high risk or certainty of being seriously harmed in some way, but it *is* also applied in the rare cases where the person had to act against massive psychological pressure, as he did.
Also, that ideal of a hero dates back to ancient times, and likely to the very first stories that early mankind told around the fire; it's not a "Hollywood" concept.
SpiderOak also has versioning even on free accounts, which has saved me repeatedly from the results of stupid mistakes and OpenOffice corrupting files.
Why would she need dozens of tabs currently active rather than use an extension like TooManyTabs? Don't get me wrong, I've been a power user since I first got on with Netscape 1.x, and used to be way over the top with the number of Firefox tabs -- then I started getting tired of the performance hit, and stopped to think whether I really needed ALL of them open simultaneously. Turned out that I didn't -- I usually had a bunch pointing to comments I was planning/writing (many of which I never got around to finishing), articles I planned to read (which now go into Readability or TMT), articles thought I might want to reference (now in TMT or bookmarked), plus the usual assortment of app tabs (Gmail, shopping cart, etc.). After all, I can only have so many windows & tabs visible at the same time...
I'm still a Firefox power user, but usually max out tab usage at around 20 and run a similar number of extensions. My computer's a single-core 2GHz (an exciting upgrade from my old 1.6GHz last year) with 1GB of RAM, running Linux for the performance boost over WinXP. Not ideal, but given I'm just doing generic web/office stuff that doesn't require a really high-powered system, it's OK -- and frankly, I'm a lot happier with my stuff this way than I was back when I casually bought replacements rather than do things like take the time to ask myself "do I REALLY need 90 tabs active?"
It would be a pain to carry a rectangle everyday in one of my pants pocket (I carry enough crap already : tobacco, cigarette paper, keys, lighter, smartcards, corkscrew, a small purse with cash coins and USB drive)
When I switched to a 4" touchscreen earlier this year, I was surprised to discover that it actually fits *better* in my tiny messenger bag/purse (or back pocket) than my compact dumbphone did because it's maybe half the thickness even with a case on. Alternately, you could just get a slightly bigger bag.
The mixed-color issue could be handled by selling it as a cheaper grade for people willing to paint on the colors they want over a white basecoat -- I imagine that would work fine for a lot of hobbyists creating models, for example. If the person wants to recycle that plastic, they can use paint thinner or similar liquid to strip it back to a naked state prior to melting down or customizing it. That method could produce a viable source of cheap 3D-printable plastic for people testing out a design, on a tight budget, or whose primary interest is in hand painting miniatures or scale models.
A similar approach was used by some scale model & toy manufacturers relying on cellulose acetate during the 70s oil crisis: the clean white they normally used was in short supply, so they switched to marbled green/gray plastic and used a thick white basecoat to cover it up. (Here's one company's creations as an example.) Those models were often then "recycled" either by the company stripping & melting the plastic down for reuse, or by hobbyists stripping and customizing them.
Because other horrid disorders like sickle cell anemia affect red cell shape as well, and (as in the case of sickle cell) some can't be prevented.
Also, try expressing your opinions without dragging politics (racial or otherwise) into it, unless you *like* having your posts modded into oblivion. The term "liberal" applies to a very wide spectrum of beliefs, just as "conservative" does, so lumping all of its members together is pretty dim -- and the clumsy way you did so makes it fairly clear that you're parroting crap to hide a lack of detailed knowledge on the subject.
the highest rule one can follow is to Do The Right Thing. we each should have some idea as to what that is.
this is higher than any loyalty to a government or country. higher than loyalty to a religion. higher than what your employer wants you to do.
I include manning and snowden as true heros and patriots.
I agree, particularly regarding Snowden, as he already knew what he would face based on how Manning was openly treated. I don't think I've felt admiring awe for somebody's actions since I was a kid, and even back then, it would've been for a fictional character (or at best the highly fictionalized Robin Hood) as "real people" seemingly didn't put themselves on the line for any principles beyond "look out for number one."
IMHO between our government turning against us, the crappy economy, etc. most Americans have needed a few real heroes to believe in for a while now... It's sad that (seemingly) most people won't realize that's what they're looking at until-or-unless Hollywood turns it into an action movie in a decade or two.
It's not really democratically elected: much of it is appointed by the existing corrupt government, and all important positions that we can vote on are effectively restricted to candidates approved by one of the two political parties. The rare times that a third party comes even remotely close to gaining power, the closest major party absorbs it, thus severely diluting its ability to have any real effect.
As far as I'd ever heard, it has been known in the West as "Luna" from the Roman goddess personifying it, and the term "lunar" was derived from it. However, NASA evidently decided at some point to formally (re)name it "The Moon" because Modern English doesn't give separate terms for that specific moon and other ones. It seems more to me like the kind of move made to pander to the growing population of anti-intellectual/anti-education people.
your "patchy at best" lead in isn't very convincing. An average American home that hasn't just been through a... earthquake
So everyone not on the East Coast, Midwest or West Coast?
No. Earthquakes are rare, and even the once-in-a-lifetime giants don't usually cause widespread power outages; at worst, the epicenter and area immediately around it might be affected, or PG&E might briefly shut down power at the nearest station to run a safety check.
Power outages here are normally caused by power poles being knocked over by trees (due to weather) or cars, or once in a long while, a rare but major problem at the substation. That might happen to a household once every decade or so, though the length varies wildly with the cause.
5 minutes per year is high when it's spread out over dailly 1-2 second outages. Which is what I started experiencing when moving to the US 14 years ago, and have experienced since, living in three different towns and five different homes.
That sounds more like aging or damaged electrical wiring, speaking about both from experience. Mice & various bugs can damage wiring up just enough to cause problems without shorting it out entirely, so even new homes aren't immune. In addition, the wiring of homes built before the 1990s wasn't designed to handle the kind of power consumption from an average modern household, and it usually degrades over time; the visible result is things like the lights dimming & brightening in response to demand, electronics and incandescent lightbulbs being very short-lived due to surges.
Old outlets can also be a major factor so that gradually lower loads cause the power on its circuit to dim, surge, or trip the breaker, and in some cases, make outlet/wall heat up, or even put on a small fireworks display. From what I've read, a common cause is the outlet/wires slowly breaking down due to being made of incompatible materials. Once I replaced all of the outlets in my home, capacity increased enough to handle running the air conditioner, whereas before, we were at the point where a space heater would trip the circuit breaker or heat the wall up.
Please, do spend some time looking into wiring issues and ask around your neighborhood to find out how many other people are seeing the same thing -- you don't want to find out the problem isn't widespread by having your house catch fire.
The surgeon/hospital would've gotten permission from the patient first -- recording & sharing OR videos has been going on for decades in university teaching hospitals, and from experience, those places are *very* careful to ask permission for just about anything educational.
There's a bit of that sort of thing too for the older group, I think
Agreed. All of the names borrowed from fiction/games (Legolas, MotherZero, etc.) would've come into use around the same time, and from what I remember, quite a few ended up using RPG handles that now seem cringe-worthy. Yours doesn't look bad at all compared to most of those.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right that Jobs didn't invent anything; he was Apple's sales/marketing leader, and Wozniak was solely responsible for the Apple 1 & Apple II. However, the Apple I was their first computer, released in April 1976 (the PET came out in January 1977), and it *did* have some crucial features before competing systems. To quote Wikipedia:
Unlike other hobbyist computers of its day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a fully assembled circuit board containing about 60+ chips. ... The Apple I's built-in computer terminal circuitry was distinctive. All one needed was a keyboard and an inexpensive television set. Competing machines such as the Altair 8800 generally were programmed with front-mounted toggle switches and used indicator lights (red LEDs, most commonly) for output, and had to be extended with separate hardware to allow connection to a computer terminal or a teletypewriter machine. This made the Apple I an innovative machine for its day.
FWIW while I wasn't born until shortly after the PET came out, I've been heavily into "retro-computing" and industry history/lore since I was a young teen.
Icons that are a good representation of their function and toolbar customization together provide the same easily-recognized features as a sidebar in a much smaller space. If users are having trouble to the point of needing labels after a few uses, that suggests that the icon designers focused too heavily on being attractive or trendy rather than clearly representing their function. It's a sadly common problem in modern-day software, regardless of its economic or source status -- a shame, since there's no lack of info on good UI design.
I use OpenOffice rather than Calligra, but I got to try out the sidebar approach as OO got basically the same thing in last week's release. The sidebar/text-instead-of-icons approach is okay for someone that periodically does word-processing with one document at a time -- not for people that wish to conserve screen space (e.g. to compare versions, refer to notes, or keep other programs visible) or that use it often enough to know their icons/shortcuts.
Personally, I want *any* WP window to be focused on my document and let me use the rest of my 1920x1080 23" screen for other things -- show another file, access files, use my playlist, or even stare at my wallpaper while thinking something over. As I've learned the icons I use, customized my toolbar and know basic keyboard shortcuts, it seems odd to use a relatively wide vertical stripe of my WP window to house dialog boxes that I either rarely use or that have the same stuff that's in my toolbar.
A few OO screenshots to illustrate:
My typical setup vs. OO4 w/Properties sidebar
Mine w/Styles dialog vs. OO w/Styles sidebar
Notes: That setup takes up around half of my screen, and "Styles" always looks nearly that empty as I only use 1-3 styles per document. (Have to enjoy the irony in the large sidebar-choosing icons being attractive but not terribly well-designed as UI elements, given they presumably exist in part because people can't identify the normal icons...)
Where I live, US 8-10 women's sell out first, and men have just as many shoes out & available. As for the rest, your friend (or possibly you?) really need update your stereotypes -- the "all women love to shop and own like a million shoes, all men hate to shop" stuff is so outdated that it's absurd. (I can't figure out why so much more of the geek community believes that kind of stuff than regular people do.)
Some people from both genders love shopping for new clothes and/or shoes, and some dislike it. Most people mislead others into believing they fit one gender stereotype or another for fear they won't be accepted or fit in, including shopping or clothes/shoe ownership. I don't know many fellow mid-thirtysomethings that do it, though, and from what I've heard/seen, it's even more rare in the folks younger than us.
FWIW my feet are US size 9.5, I own 5 pairs total (gym, around the house & everyday casual sneakers, a generic low-heel women's formal shoe & a generic unisex office-style formal one), and I hate shopping for clothes/shoes.
The trick is to insist that they use a butterfly needle, both based on my experience with veins damaged in childhood from tons of blood draws & IVs, and that of a nurse that advised me as a kid during one needlephobic freakout. Winged needles go in at an extremely shallow angle that's much less likely to make the vein roll or misbehave, they're held by the "wings" at the base of the needle with far more accuracy, and the syringe is at the other end of a long tube so it won't move the needle when they switch vials; IME as an adult, they also don't cause as much damage or scar tissue.
It ... may or may not catch on fire at some point.
So for $35 you get a "nice" gift to give relatives you hate? ;-)
From what I read at Ars Technica, the Verge article is inaccurate; evidently Wired & other reviewers didn't run into the same problems. The discussion at Ars Tech was quite interesting if you're like me and tempted to get one:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/the-chromecast-has-a-netflix-promotion-and-its-gone/?comments=1&start=0
I've been looking into WD TV lately, and it's one of the options I'm seriously considering getting for my mother, as we switched from cable to watching online & downloading years ago. She has a Roku, but the interface is fairly exasperating and it's only able to show the pre-defined sources it came with; AFAIK it can't discover (or be sent) videos across our network, and trying to manually set it up to access a system with that interface just might result in me throwing it out a window in frustration.
Simply Mepis on my 8y/o laptop plays Flash vids in Firefox with no problem... Maybe it's your distro or the browser you're using?
FWIW I don't recall whether I had to install the plugin manually or if it came OOTB, but it would've been no big deal if I did -- just a matter of either grabbing the .deb from Adobe & installing it or searching for and selecting it in Synaptic Package Manager. Shouldn't take more than five minutes, unless my cheapo DSL connection was being even slower than usual.
I wonder if it would've been mentioned if he was from another party, or if the assumption is that Slashdotters (or geeks) virtually all view libertarianism in a positive light.
It was designed to keep the rich people rich, and the poor people poor. You know, the logical consequences of unrestricted corporate freedom. And if that's not the Libertarian ideal, then what is?
From what I've seen, most geek libertarians figure either that they're only non-rich because the big bad government is in the way (while everyone else is non-rich due to their own faults/choices) -- or, alternately, that everyone hard-working and smart would quickly become affluent without a government to 'interfere.'
WTF are you talking about?
Check out the guy's other posts -- they're all like that for some reason. I've been wondering what the deal is for a while now, especially since it's rare that anyone seems to notice anything awry.
It's Minesweeper Consultant & Solitaire Expert - MCSE.
Or Must Call Somebody Else, for the "all certs, no clue" variety of admin.
Bingo. It's grown year-round here in California, which AFAIK is the primary source of broccoli for North America. There has to be some difference (age? time since being cut?) between the broccoli sent to other areas versus sold here in local stores, though -- the stuff here rarely has a markedly unpleasant or bitter flavor, especially when cooked, and nobody I knew growing up had a real problem with it more than any other veggie.
You should've tried plugging a 2-wire audio cable from a motherboard's speaker output pins up to a soundcard's slightly-different-looking input pins -- as I learned in the late 90s, doing that and powering the system on results in a bright flash, the smell of an electrical fire, and one thoroughly blackened wire.
AFAIK, that isn't irony, but what kind of "sacrifices" are you talking about? The word "hero" generally refers to somebody that chooses to act in the greater good despite a high risk or certainty of being seriously harmed in some way, but it *is* also applied in the rare cases where the person had to act against massive psychological pressure, as he did.
Also, that ideal of a hero dates back to ancient times, and likely to the very first stories that early mankind told around the fire; it's not a "Hollywood" concept.
SpiderOak also has versioning even on free accounts, which has saved me repeatedly from the results of stupid mistakes and OpenOffice corrupting files.
Why would she need dozens of tabs currently active rather than use an extension like TooManyTabs? Don't get me wrong, I've been a power user since I first got on with Netscape 1.x, and used to be way over the top with the number of Firefox tabs -- then I started getting tired of the performance hit, and stopped to think whether I really needed ALL of them open simultaneously. Turned out that I didn't -- I usually had a bunch pointing to comments I was planning/writing (many of which I never got around to finishing), articles I planned to read (which now go into Readability or TMT), articles thought I might want to reference (now in TMT or bookmarked), plus the usual assortment of app tabs (Gmail, shopping cart, etc.). After all, I can only have so many windows & tabs visible at the same time...
I'm still a Firefox power user, but usually max out tab usage at around 20 and run a similar number of extensions. My computer's a single-core 2GHz (an exciting upgrade from my old 1.6GHz last year) with 1GB of RAM, running Linux for the performance boost over WinXP. Not ideal, but given I'm just doing generic web/office stuff that doesn't require a really high-powered system, it's OK -- and frankly, I'm a lot happier with my stuff this way than I was back when I casually bought replacements rather than do things like take the time to ask myself "do I REALLY need 90 tabs active?"
It would be a pain to carry a rectangle everyday in one of my pants pocket (I carry enough crap already : tobacco, cigarette paper, keys, lighter, smartcards, corkscrew, a small purse with cash coins and USB drive)
When I switched to a 4" touchscreen earlier this year, I was surprised to discover that it actually fits *better* in my tiny messenger bag/purse (or back pocket) than my compact dumbphone did because it's maybe half the thickness even with a case on. Alternately, you could just get a slightly bigger bag.
The mixed-color issue could be handled by selling it as a cheaper grade for people willing to paint on the colors they want over a white basecoat -- I imagine that would work fine for a lot of hobbyists creating models, for example. If the person wants to recycle that plastic, they can use paint thinner or similar liquid to strip it back to a naked state prior to melting down or customizing it. That method could produce a viable source of cheap 3D-printable plastic for people testing out a design, on a tight budget, or whose primary interest is in hand painting miniatures or scale models.
A similar approach was used by some scale model & toy manufacturers relying on cellulose acetate during the 70s oil crisis: the clean white they normally used was in short supply, so they switched to marbled green/gray plastic and used a thick white basecoat to cover it up. (Here's one company's creations as an example.) Those models were often then "recycled" either by the company stripping & melting the plastic down for reuse, or by hobbyists stripping and customizing them.
Because other horrid disorders like sickle cell anemia affect red cell shape as well, and (as in the case of sickle cell) some can't be prevented.
Also, try expressing your opinions without dragging politics (racial or otherwise) into it, unless you *like* having your posts modded into oblivion. The term "liberal" applies to a very wide spectrum of beliefs, just as "conservative" does, so lumping all of its members together is pretty dim -- and the clumsy way you did so makes it fairly clear that you're parroting crap to hide a lack of detailed knowledge on the subject.
the highest rule one can follow is to Do The Right Thing. we each should have some idea as to what that is.
this is higher than any loyalty to a government or country. higher than loyalty to a religion. higher than what your employer wants you to do.
I include manning and snowden as true heros and patriots.
I agree, particularly regarding Snowden, as he already knew what he would face based on how Manning was openly treated. I don't think I've felt admiring awe for somebody's actions since I was a kid, and even back then, it would've been for a fictional character (or at best the highly fictionalized Robin Hood) as "real people" seemingly didn't put themselves on the line for any principles beyond "look out for number one."
IMHO between our government turning against us, the crappy economy, etc. most Americans have needed a few real heroes to believe in for a while now... It's sad that (seemingly) most people won't realize that's what they're looking at until-or-unless Hollywood turns it into an action movie in a decade or two.
Nope -- it's been "Native American" at least since the early 90s.
It's not really democratically elected: much of it is appointed by the existing corrupt government, and all important positions that we can vote on are effectively restricted to candidates approved by one of the two political parties. The rare times that a third party comes even remotely close to gaining power, the closest major party absorbs it, thus severely diluting its ability to have any real effect.
As far as I'd ever heard, it has been known in the West as "Luna" from the Roman goddess personifying it, and the term "lunar" was derived from it. However, NASA evidently decided at some point to formally (re)name it "The Moon" because Modern English doesn't give separate terms for that specific moon and other ones. It seems more to me like the kind of move made to pander to the growing population of anti-intellectual/anti-education people.
your "patchy at best" lead in isn't very convincing. An average American home that hasn't just been through a ... earthquake
So everyone not on the East Coast, Midwest or West Coast?
No. Earthquakes are rare, and even the once-in-a-lifetime giants don't usually cause widespread power outages; at worst, the epicenter and area immediately around it might be affected, or PG&E might briefly shut down power at the nearest station to run a safety check.
Power outages here are normally caused by power poles being knocked over by trees (due to weather) or cars, or once in a long while, a rare but major problem at the substation. That might happen to a household once every decade or so, though the length varies wildly with the cause.
5 minutes per year is high when it's spread out over dailly 1-2 second outages. Which is what I started experiencing when moving to the US 14 years ago, and have experienced since, living in three different towns and five different homes.
That sounds more like aging or damaged electrical wiring, speaking about both from experience. Mice & various bugs can damage wiring up just enough to cause problems without shorting it out entirely, so even new homes aren't immune. In addition, the wiring of homes built before the 1990s wasn't designed to handle the kind of power consumption from an average modern household, and it usually degrades over time; the visible result is things like the lights dimming & brightening in response to demand, electronics and incandescent lightbulbs being very short-lived due to surges.
Old outlets can also be a major factor so that gradually lower loads cause the power on its circuit to dim, surge, or trip the breaker, and in some cases, make outlet/wall heat up, or even put on a small fireworks display. From what I've read, a common cause is the outlet/wires slowly breaking down due to being made of incompatible materials. Once I replaced all of the outlets in my home, capacity increased enough to handle running the air conditioner, whereas before, we were at the point where a space heater would trip the circuit breaker or heat the wall up.
Please, do spend some time looking into wiring issues and ask around your neighborhood to find out how many other people are seeing the same thing -- you don't want to find out the problem isn't widespread by having your house catch fire.
The surgeon/hospital would've gotten permission from the patient first -- recording & sharing OR videos has been going on for decades in university teaching hospitals, and from experience, those places are *very* careful to ask permission for just about anything educational.
There's a bit of that sort of thing too for the older group, I think
Agreed. All of the names borrowed from fiction/games (Legolas, MotherZero, etc.) would've come into use around the same time, and from what I remember, quite a few ended up using RPG handles that now seem cringe-worthy. Yours doesn't look bad at all compared to most of those.