The business model they have milked for years is dry.
Technology changed things. Their business model is dead, just like our privacy.
Grouse as we might, there is no stopping the likes of business entities such as TransUnion, TRW, Equifax, ChoicePoint, and others from acquiring and sharing our personal information. We may even claim "copyright" over our life, as we are the author of it, but its not going to stop them.
Once ANYTHING digitizible is released, it IS public!
It costs nothing to make exact digital copies.
The people insisting on copyright protection are going to be just about as successful as me trying to keep my affairs out of the hands of credit bureaus, insurance, and medical databases. The best I am going to be able to do is they won't share right in front of me - they'll do anything they want behind my back.
Times have changed, fellas.
They are shooting themselves in the foot, as they are restricting music "owned" by the label inaccessible behind a "paywall", promoting public ignorance of their performers. What they are doing now is the exact opposite of the older ( 60's ) paradigm of giving AM radio deejays copies of their record and bribing/paying/hoping they would play it on the air.
Like the rest of us - adapt.
The idea that you can put anything out there - and expect to retain control of it is dead.
Read this discussion on Slashdot and they will tell you what they will pay for. Digitized music did not make the list.
This thread has been an interesting read. You have reconfirmed my apprehension for newer automotive technologies.
Two of them, ABS braking and fuel injection ( with OBD2 ), I am all for. The rest of 'em though seem to me a design from Rube Goldberg.
Don't get me wrong. I love driving aids, especially GPS, and I love OBD2 that lets me see how the Engine Control Unit is faring.
I am a "control freak". I feel responsible for what my machine does. I want the assurance of a steel rod running from my steering wheel to the rack-and-pinion gearing steering the front tires, and knowing there is no way for anyone to instruct my car to ignore my steering commands. Same with the brakes - hydraulics. And acceleration/fuel for the engine - a cable linkage.
These, I understand, and have an inner feel for when anything is amiss.
"Drive by Wire" scares the hell out of me.
This whole thread gives me comfort knowing that I said the right thing to the repair garage a few months ago when they told me it was going to cost right at one thousand dollars to re-do the entire braking system on my nearly 40 year old toyota, that has hauled me nearly a half a million miles. They advised me it was an old car and not worth all that much. Well, maybe not to them, but I have come to really have a love for the simplicity of that old car. I had them redo the whole shebang - every cylinder, caliper, shoe, and hose. By golly, I consider the brakes the most critical part of the car. If ANYTHING works, the brakes will,
As one of the other posters noted, it is a great fear of mine too that "pranksters" will discover access pathways into a fancy car and wreak havoc by remote control, anonymously, just for the fun of watching the crash. Its the same thing that made "Winnuke" so popular back in the early internet days, when we found out we could send just one malicious packet to someone to give them the blue screen of death. We'd do it for the pure fun of it.
Although I like the new car's interiors, for now I will consider them a "rich man's toy" because they are so expensive to maintain.
As a side note, its not the cost that kills my enthusiasm, rather it is my impression of quality. I believe in getting good value for my money. I have even been spending $15-$20 for flashlights... ( Ultrafire WF-502B's with various P60 LED engine cartridges - and only WF-502B ) because these lights are made to last, and being the owner of a few laptops, I have plenty of the Lithium 18650 cells these lights use. I am hooked on those 18650 cells giving their second life powering things on the cell level ( 3.6 to 4.2 volts per cell ) when the laptop battery pack fails. Meanwhile I have plenty of little dollar-store LED lights, and have retrofitted my old filament-based D-cell flashlights with LED's
Most of the time, newer technology is better, but its not always the case.
Sometimes its just not "done" yet and other times it wasn't such a good idea in the first place but some marketer saw a buck in it.
This has been an interesting topic... how should a carrier charge?
Internet access has been a pain-in-the-arse for me, too - where "advances" in technology gives webmasters opportunities to use more and more bloatware, which I must download in order to view often simple content.
Javascript is by far the most egregious, with flash running a close second. A couple of those on the page can cause me to download megabytes of unwanted crap while I am looking for a simple link to what I am looking for.
This really stymies my efforts to conserve bandwidth, as webmasters will use these wasteful technologies to deliver the wanted content. Like using javascript directors instead of a simple HTML link to force me into enabling javascript in order to use his site.
Let me relate something similar:
I was at a city council meeting discussing water rates in the city. I was opposed to the across-the-board increasing of all the connection fees and "meter charges", as I felt simply charging everyone more for access to water defeated the whole idea of metering water so that those who used the most water paid the most.
I try to conserve, I wash my car with a wet rag. Take short showers, even have one of those damned toilets that require five to six flushes to get the job done, etc, as my State government has been telling us we are running short of freshwater and the farmers need it. If that be the case, I would rather see the water on the crop, not in the gutter in front of my house.
Yet my neighbor wastes water, and I often see his water running down the gutter in front of my house. Automatic sprinklers, poorly aimed, and poorly timed.
I feel I am trying to live with the situation, and would rather see the cost borne by those using more of what appears to be a limited resource..
Which is exactly opposite to how I feel about being limited on internet access.
A lot has to do with my impression that internet bandwidth is not in short supply, as nothing I see limits it.
I can build bigger irrigation pipe, but if there is no water to put in it, what's the point?
There seems to be a infinite amount of binary info people want to exchange, so where is the pipe?
That's why I feel when I pay for internet access, I pay for pipe, not water ( content ).
I find myself becoming increasingly annoyed at the "service companies" as I would at a restaurant seeing my meal cooling on the counter while understaffed waitresses cannot get around to serving my dish.
Yet I see the restaurant does have the money to send executives to golf resorts.
While using "barriers to entry" to keep competitors from opening up a "roach coach" in front of their establishment and taking all their customers.
I was hoping Clear Communications would open up a big 4G wireless net and give AT&T, Warner, and Verizon a run.
My parent is one of the most insightful posts in this thread - currently rated zero?
Had I any mod points, I would give you one.
What you observe about Nigeria is precisely where I am afraid our politicians are leading USA: a "service" economy that produces nothing.
Oh yes, Grandpa was very proud of his tractors - he had several in his "corn crib".
Like you say, simple machines he could maintain himself.
I take it you are referring to the old two-cylinder John Deere that had the big flywheel on the side which not only kept the engine going, but would also weight down the rear tires so they got enough traction to dig in and pull the plow.
He farmed 800 acres of corn and cotton in Alabama on that thing.
I was kicking back up something an old professor told me... about people's primary motivations being fear and greed.
Marketing will either play to your fear ( especially insurance companies, and religions selling "fire insurance" ) or greed ( especially investment advisors and real estate brokers ).
I indicated it was in me too. Yes, I invested a lot of my resources in oil a couple of years ago, as I was convinced "peak oil" was here, and I thought few other people were aware of it. I felt with my understanding of M. King Hubbert's work with the Logistic equation and the stints I served in the oil patch where I had observed depleting oilfields first hand, I felt I had a better understanding of the gravity of the situation. I am very aware of the Logistic Equation and its implications. The exponential rate of our reproduction... 6.5 billion of us now... and energy demand now exceeding 500 exajoules/year , most coming from ancient sunlight stored in fossil fuels.
I honestly thought there was hell to pay. Soon. and I would be able to profit from it.
That's not what happened. I lost my investments in solar power and alternative energy research. Now the talking heads are saying we have more oil than we know what to do with, we are going to become a net exporter, go buy your big car, and the party is going to go on. While everything inside of me says this is just marketing lies similar to those in the oilpatch by some to sell a well which struck a gas pocket to ignorant investors.
Meanwhile, I have family back in farming areas who tell me their wells no longer give good water. They tell me their water reeks of oil.
Now, in my limited knowledge of subsurface structures, I can just imagine fracturing the barriers that have been in place for eons separating water and oil-bearing strata. I can see some getting rich. Others having their water messed up.
How many drops of oil in the water tank make the whole tank undrinkable?
We studied this phenomena in economics..... its called "Tragedy of the Commons".
I was watching this in action last weekend as the local education board was meeting again trying to get more taxes passed as the ruptured economy caused by Bernake's hiking the federal funds rate after the government had put all sorts of incentives in place for poor people to invest their life savings in debt ( aka "Community Reinvestment Act - which forced banks to make subprime loans - then allowed banks to pawn off these toxic financial instruments onto investors ).
They just haven't got the message yet. A lot of us are losing their homes. A lot of us can no longer afford restaurant meals. A lot of us can no longer afford people in the school system which are not actively teaching a class. We can't solve this with yet more taxes. Yet, I see these people given their government-given power to lay and collect tax insulating them from the burden their wastefulness places on everyone else.
I wish we were all innocent artists - like the children the Bible refers to. But it doesn't quite work that way. Many make a fine living from gaming the system. And others work very hard to survive.
I did not think the Fed would hike rates after "helping" all those low income people get into homes with subprime adjustable rate mortgages, making all those people they had "helped" lose not only their homes, their life savings, and what little credit rating they had. They did.
I am watching the way this whole affair plays out and it makes me sick.
It has had two complete brake re-do's, that is complete changeout of the entire braking system.
It needs a re-upholstery job bad. I have been making do with seat covers for years, but you really hope never to see what's under them.
Two paint jobs and ready for the third.
Two water pumps, an alternator, and a radiator - and I could consider all of them kinda minor repairs the way this car is made. Not much more problem than changing a headlight.
Oh yes, a dozen or so light bulbs, batteries, occasional points, spark plugs, and tire changes because the old ones rotted... the car is not heavy so I really have to work on it to wear a tire out.
All in all, I really like that old car. It shows beautiful quality of design.
I just ( this year ) bought several VISIO 22" TV's to replace the old NEC Multisync VGA monitors I have had in use for 20 years.
The Multisyncs still work. But they are not nearly as sharp, nor would they work as a TV, and a heckuva lot heaver. I am still wondering what to do with the multisyncs.. I will probably take them apart for their high-voltage video and deflection transistors, as well as a handful of high voltage diodes, capacitors, and various magnetics. Their 20 year old CRT's are all suffering from cathode emission degradation, subsequently can no longer give as sharp of image as they once did. My hat is off to the engineering team who designed these things. They have done their job very well.
It looks like my old LaserJet 2 will go when its toner runs out. Its plastics are getting quite brittle after 20 years exposure to ozone. It prints graphics at a glacial pace compared to my later machines. It has been a good machine. I doubt its replacement will last as long, but then, neither will I.
Top of the list goes to Toyota, who made me a car some 35 years ago, that has hauled me half a million miles with little more than oil changes and brake pads. The car shows the wear of old age which I attempt to disguise with new paint. The key is so worn it barely stays in the lock, but the car runs like a top. Its a simple little car: carburetor, points, manual transmission. I figure that car will be like the grandfather clock in the song that runs till the old man dies - in this case... me.
At the bottom of my list is the clowns who designed the valving for my kitchen sink. They did a great job concealing the leakage from a failing seal so it would drip somewhere I would not see it. I smelled it one day, when I had growths of mold and mildew all over where the water had puddled for years under the kitchen sink. Neatly hidden under a shelf. Major pain in the arse to fix.
Clowns of like ilk designed the shower valving in the shower, so leakage would be directed back through a little decorative tube into the wall where I would not see it. I did a little pre-emptive hacking with some putty and dammed up the little tube so that any leakage would be forced to drip out at the handle harmlessly falling down to the shower drain.
Just a little foresight in the design phase can sure save a heckuva lot of frustration for everyone else.
I always have crocodile clips in my computer bag. If nothing else to get POTS dialup from third rate hotels. However, they can just as easily be used on electric cords.
I can already see lamp cords with compromised insulation wreaking all sorts of havoc with the fire inspector weeks after your visit..
Very likely, a lot of people will do this.
The hotels may be setting themselves up for vandalism, much like pay toilets set the janitorial staff up for messes that belong in the toilet.
Which will be less expensive, putting up with the "theft" of power for a laptop, hair dryer, toothbrush, whatever, or discovering and fixing the damage done by patrons driven to vandalism trying to satisfy their needs?
Not to say its right to damage stuff, but its kinda like having a vending machine in the alley where homeless people are camped. You better watch it closely, or you will find its window smashed, all the product gone, and no money in the coin-box.
Boy does that old music ever bring back some happy times in my life.
I thought it would be soooo cool for us old fogies to queue up our favorites at the table while dining, or even bring in our favorites being the place was already licensed anyway, and would not face the wrath of the mafiaa.
That sounds just like a job long ago for a restauranteur.
He wanted one of those hi-tech looking displays showing his food, menus, and prices. He had the "high tech display": his projection TV.
What he ended up with was his old PC-AT home computer yanked from a pile in his garage and loaded with a bunch of GIF's and JPG's he created to his heart's content on his nicer home computer. Loaded all the images he wanted to display in a subdirectory, along with a DOS slideshow program. A little edit of Autoexec.bat and config.sys, and every time the computer was turned on, all it knew to do was start the slideshow and run it until power was turned off at the end of the day.
It was a no-brainer being he plugged the whole shebang into his beer-sign lighting circuit. There was no change to the routine for his help in opening shop for business. When they turned on the beer-sign circuit as usual, his "high tech display" would start up and run until they turned off the beersign lights at the end of the day.
He was aware of the limitations of the system, so he made his images with that in mind. He could create anything he wanted for it to display, with no more intervention from me.
He seemed happy enough. He was ready to toss it all anyway, and all it cost him was a dinner for me and my buddy.
I wanted so bad to do something for a '50s style diner in my area to retrofit those table-controlled jukeboxes as a serial terminal so I could queue up.MP3 requests for a DOS MP3 player, but the owner had other vendors in mind.
That would have been fun, as I wanted to keep all the old vacuum tube amplifiers running, and even the record selector, but what would actually go through the system would be a MP3, not what was coming off the tone arm... the spinning record being "played" would be just for show. It would not make any difference at all what 45rpm record was in the slot... its just there for people to reminisce seeing things behave and hearing that 120Hz hum in it, just like it did when they, like I, was a kid.
I could rip all the MP3's I needed because he already had licenses from all the copyright people to play copyrighted music in his place. So I could load up the machine with anything. I thought it would be a nice touch if he kept his customer's favorites on the machine, as well as honoring requests. I even have an old mechanical typewriter so I could make more of those tags for the table units so they still looked like they came from the '50s.
Fer cryin' out loud, they even gave me schematics!
I guess in those days they figured if you were knowledgeable enough to buy their thing, by golly you probably had the skills to fix it too.
It was TEST equipment, meaning you were connecting it to God knows what, where only God knew what malfunctions were in it. This is a sure-fire recipe for an occasional fireworks display on the bench.
Those were the days. I am glad I didn't miss them.
I learned more from fixing my test equipment than I ever learned from books and exams. And I got to learn from the best... Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard.
Like you pointed out, the BGA ( even those surface-mount IC's ) did it in for me. I could not get test prods on them, much less remove/replace them, even if I could get my hands on what soon became custom ASIC's.
The new stuff is either factory-support or downright disposables.
Those were the days. Thanks for another trip down memory lane.
The first thing I thought while I was loading this topic was steganography. So I asked my browser to find this word and discovered you beat me to it.
A really good question now is how do you allow any internet traffic at all? Nearly anything can be encoded with steganographic information.
There was one guy on the net a few years ago named "Fravia" that went on in detail how to make steganographic communications programs on the fly. Wonderful work.
After reading his essays, which he so graciously shared with the world, I knew every hardcore computer oriented freedom fighter would archive his works. This technology would assure that as long as there was communication at all, no repressive regime would be able to censor it, or even know what was going on right under their nose.
When I was younger, hormones were raging more, and it was kinda a status thing to have a "trophy" mate.
I did not succeed in getting one.
Now, I don't really want one all that much. I see my married friends, and many of them are tolerating each other trying to avoid the expense of dissolving the whole thing.
If I found someone I loved, I would take her.
But a "trophy"? Forget it! They are way way way more trouble than they are worth. The maintenance on those things are the biggest pain in the arse you will ever see.
At this stage of my life, I choose my friends like I choose my tools. If they are good, sturdy, and reliable - they are good to have around. If they are flashy and finicky, they aren't worth a damm and everybody wants to steal it anyway. Let 'em have it.
By now, I treasure a good comfortable pair of jeans far more than some suit that itches and pinches and threatens to tear every time I do anything.
I guess Spock of "Star Trek" laid it out pretty clear for me when he advised one of his competitors for a woman that he would find "having" not at all like "wanting".
Yes, lowered expectations,
It was kinda like my conversation with a frustrated neighbor telling me the spark coils for his Mercedes were running $1000 a pop, and there were eight of them in the car,,, I was looking at my old toyota and noting I had over 300K miles on it. I never have had to mess with the coil, although I did admit I needed a set of points for it every 100K miles or so. That old car is so simple and reliable, I would not even think of trading it for his fancy, expensive car. I will probably have that old car for the rest of my life. I have no desire for a fancy car that will bring no joy to me, just a pain in the side needing all sorts of "authorized service" to "protect my investment", so as not to "invalidate my warranty".
I finally realized -- I had it right when I was a little kid and was corrected for introducing my cousin's husband-to-be as her "finance". It created lots of laughter, before concerned individuals corrected me and told me the correct word was "fiance", not "finance".
Consider the marketing angle... that's where the money is.
The people who are opening their wallet to buy are after the snazziest technology they can get. Bragging rights. By golly, they want to have something that everybody else doesn't have.
Lamborghini did not make their profits from their mileage numbers. Anyone who can afford their cars would probably reconsider their purchase if the car failed to pass everything they meet on the freeway.
So the phone won't run an hour between charges... who cares? The guy has already bought spare battery packs and charging apparatus. The phone has already served its purpose if it impressed the hell out of his co-workers during the call in the conference room.
These phones are not designed for the same market that goes to Wal-Mart for jeans.
Slashdot Mirror
I just saw some stuff on youtube that, well for me, was quite scary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxri6DDYAdM
It was about dangerous sites on the internet. Youtube has lots of links to other similar postings.
A question for fellow slashdotters... how much truth is in this? Or are they playing games with me to scare the hell out of me?
Comments invited.
What you say is what concerns them so.
The business model they have milked for years is dry.
Technology changed things. Their business model is dead, just like our privacy.
Grouse as we might, there is no stopping the likes of business entities such as TransUnion, TRW, Equifax, ChoicePoint, and others from acquiring and sharing our personal information. We may even claim "copyright" over our life, as we are the author of it, but its not going to stop them.
Once ANYTHING digitizible is released, it IS public!
It costs nothing to make exact digital copies.
The people insisting on copyright protection are going to be just about as successful as me trying to keep my affairs out of the hands of credit bureaus, insurance, and medical databases. The best I am going to be able to do is they won't share right in front of me - they'll do anything they want behind my back.
Times have changed, fellas.
They are shooting themselves in the foot, as they are restricting music "owned" by the label inaccessible behind a "paywall", promoting public ignorance of their performers. What they are doing now is the exact opposite of the older ( 60's ) paradigm of giving AM radio deejays copies of their record and bribing/paying/hoping they would play it on the air.
Like the rest of us - adapt.
The idea that you can put anything out there - and expect to retain control of it is dead.
Read this discussion on Slashdot and they will tell you what they will pay for. Digitized music did not make the list.
I'd like to see them pass the tax, cause the only reason one buys an Ipod is to listen to music.......
But....
In the same stroke of the pen, completely eliminate ALL copyright infringement for any music played on the Ipod, cause the tax is considered payment.
This thread has been an interesting read. You have reconfirmed my apprehension for newer automotive technologies.
Two of them, ABS braking and fuel injection ( with OBD2 ), I am all for. The rest of 'em though seem to me a design from Rube Goldberg.
Don't get me wrong. I love driving aids, especially GPS, and I love OBD2 that lets me see how the Engine Control Unit is faring.
I am a "control freak". I feel responsible for what my machine does. I want the assurance of a steel rod running from my steering wheel to the rack-and-pinion gearing steering the front tires, and knowing there is no way for anyone to instruct my car to ignore my steering commands. Same with the brakes - hydraulics. And acceleration/fuel for the engine - a cable linkage.
These, I understand, and have an inner feel for when anything is amiss.
"Drive by Wire" scares the hell out of me.
This whole thread gives me comfort knowing that I said the right thing to the repair garage a few months ago when they told me it was going to cost right at one thousand dollars to re-do the entire braking system on my nearly 40 year old toyota, that has hauled me nearly a half a million miles. They advised me it was an old car and not worth all that much. Well, maybe not to them, but I have come to really have a love for the simplicity of that old car. I had them redo the whole shebang - every cylinder, caliper, shoe, and hose. By golly, I consider the brakes the most critical part of the car. If ANYTHING works, the brakes will,
As one of the other posters noted, it is a great fear of mine too that "pranksters" will discover access pathways into a fancy car and wreak havoc by remote control, anonymously, just for the fun of watching the crash. Its the same thing that made "Winnuke" so popular back in the early internet days, when we found out we could send just one malicious packet to someone to give them the blue screen of death. We'd do it for the pure fun of it.
Although I like the new car's interiors, for now I will consider them a "rich man's toy" because they are so expensive to maintain.
As a side note, its not the cost that kills my enthusiasm, rather it is my impression of quality. I believe in getting good value for my money. I have even been spending $15-$20 for flashlights... ( Ultrafire WF-502B's with various P60 LED engine cartridges - and only WF-502B ) because these lights are made to last, and being the owner of a few laptops, I have plenty of the Lithium 18650 cells these lights use. I am hooked on those 18650 cells giving their second life powering things on the cell level ( 3.6 to 4.2 volts per cell ) when the laptop battery pack fails. Meanwhile I have plenty of little dollar-store LED lights, and have retrofitted my old filament-based D-cell flashlights with LED's
Most of the time, newer technology is better, but its not always the case.
Sometimes its just not "done" yet and other times it wasn't such a good idea in the first place but some marketer saw a buck in it.
Well, anyway, that's my take.
I like their pricing strategy...
Free to learn and work on public projects.
Pay a little if you want to keep your work private.
Pay a bit more if you want to have private collaboration
This has been an interesting topic... how should a carrier charge?
Internet access has been a pain-in-the-arse for me, too - where "advances" in technology gives webmasters opportunities to use more and more bloatware, which I must download in order to view often simple content.
Javascript is by far the most egregious, with flash running a close second. A couple of those on the page can cause me to download megabytes of unwanted crap while I am looking for a simple link to what I am looking for.
This really stymies my efforts to conserve bandwidth, as webmasters will use these wasteful technologies to deliver the wanted content. Like using javascript directors instead of a simple HTML link to force me into enabling javascript in order to use his site.
Let me relate something similar:
I was at a city council meeting discussing water rates in the city. I was opposed to the across-the-board increasing of all the connection fees and "meter charges", as I felt simply charging everyone more for access to water defeated the whole idea of metering water so that those who used the most water paid the most.
I try to conserve, I wash my car with a wet rag. Take short showers, even have one of those damned toilets that require five to six flushes to get the job done, etc, as my State government has been telling us we are running short of freshwater and the farmers need it. If that be the case, I would rather see the water on the crop, not in the gutter in front of my house.
Yet my neighbor wastes water, and I often see his water running down the gutter in front of my house. Automatic sprinklers, poorly aimed, and poorly timed.
I feel I am trying to live with the situation, and would rather see the cost borne by those using more of what appears to be a limited resource..
Which is exactly opposite to how I feel about being limited on internet access.
A lot has to do with my impression that internet bandwidth is not in short supply, as nothing I see limits it.
I can build bigger irrigation pipe, but if there is no water to put in it, what's the point?
There seems to be a infinite amount of binary info people want to exchange, so where is the pipe?
That's why I feel when I pay for internet access, I pay for pipe, not water ( content ).
I find myself becoming increasingly annoyed at the "service companies" as I would at a restaurant seeing my meal cooling on the counter while understaffed waitresses cannot get around to serving my dish.
Yet I see the restaurant does have the money to send executives to golf resorts.
While using "barriers to entry" to keep competitors from opening up a "roach coach" in front of their establishment and taking all their customers.
I was hoping Clear Communications would open up a big 4G wireless net and give AT&T, Warner, and Verizon a run.
So companies claim to own everything.
Let them!
Our local government is having budgetary fits right now. We are even laying off teachers,
We all are paying stiff property tax for our homes. But its not enough.
Corporations have spent boku bucks to have their rights to ideas, even music, dealt with as property.
Its high time the whole benefit of property ownership be awarded. Including the benefit of property taxes.
There are many things I would like to have, but the expense of having them makes it not worth having it.
Why would I want an elephant if it comes with a need to feed it, house it, and care for it, even if I can charge neighborhood kids a buck to ride it?
When I say our "Pledge of Allegiance", it starts off with my committment to Pledge Allegiance to the Flag... and ends with "Justice for All".
If MY property is being taxed, why are "they" getting off scot-free?
If its MY property, I have the right to tell others they can't have it. If THEY have the right to tell me I can't have it, then its their property.
So, I am not complaining about anyone's rights, I am just saying I pay for my rights and expect everyone else to do the same.
And I also believe we would all be better off if tax law rewarded DOING something rather than hoarding things. .
My parent is one of the most insightful posts in this thread - currently rated zero?
Had I any mod points, I would give you one.
What you observe about Nigeria is precisely where I am afraid our politicians are leading USA: a "service" economy that produces nothing.
Oh yes, Grandpa was very proud of his tractors - he had several in his "corn crib".
Like you say, simple machines he could maintain himself.
I take it you are referring to the old two-cylinder John Deere that had the big flywheel on the side which not only kept the engine going, but would also weight down the rear tires so they got enough traction to dig in and pull the plow.
He farmed 800 acres of corn and cotton in Alabama on that thing.
And never missed a crop.
OK, so that did not go over too well.
.
I was kicking back up something an old professor told me... about people's primary motivations being fear and greed.
Marketing will either play to your fear ( especially insurance companies, and religions selling "fire insurance" ) or greed ( especially investment advisors and real estate brokers )
I indicated it was in me too. Yes, I invested a lot of my resources in oil a couple of years ago, as I was convinced "peak oil" was here, and I thought few other people were aware of it. I felt with my understanding of M. King Hubbert's work with the Logistic equation and the stints I served in the oil patch where I had observed depleting oilfields first hand, I felt I had a better understanding of the gravity of the situation. I am very aware of the Logistic Equation and its implications. The exponential rate of our reproduction... 6.5 billion of us now... and energy demand now exceeding 500 exajoules/year , most coming from ancient sunlight stored in fossil fuels.
I honestly thought there was hell to pay. Soon. and I would be able to profit from it.
That's not what happened. I lost my investments in solar power and alternative energy research. Now the talking heads are saying we have more oil than we know what to do with, we are going to become a net exporter, go buy your big car, and the party is going to go on. While everything inside of me says this is just marketing lies similar to those in the oilpatch by some to sell a well which struck a gas pocket to ignorant investors.
Meanwhile, I have family back in farming areas who tell me their wells no longer give good water. They tell me their water reeks of oil.
Now, in my limited knowledge of subsurface structures, I can just imagine fracturing the barriers that have been in place for eons separating water and oil-bearing strata. I can see some getting rich. Others having their water messed up.
How many drops of oil in the water tank make the whole tank undrinkable?
We studied this phenomena in economics..... its called "Tragedy of the Commons".
I was watching this in action last weekend as the local education board was meeting again trying to get more taxes passed as the ruptured economy caused by Bernake's hiking the federal funds rate after the government had put all sorts of incentives in place for poor people to invest their life savings in debt ( aka "Community Reinvestment Act - which forced banks to make subprime loans - then allowed banks to pawn off these toxic financial instruments onto investors ).
They just haven't got the message yet. A lot of us are losing their homes. A lot of us can no longer afford restaurant meals. A lot of us can no longer afford people in the school system which are not actively teaching a class. We can't solve this with yet more taxes. Yet, I see these people given their government-given power to lay and collect tax insulating them from the burden their wastefulness places on everyone else.
I wish we were all innocent artists - like the children the Bible refers to. But it doesn't quite work that way. Many make a fine living from gaming the system. And others work very hard to survive.
I did not think the Fed would hike rates after "helping" all those low income people get into homes with subprime adjustable rate mortgages, making all those people they had "helped" lose not only their homes, their life savings, and what little credit rating they had. They did.
I am watching the way this whole affair plays out and it makes me sick.
Stanley Milgrim: "Obedience to Authority".
Let me throw this into the "drone shooting" ring.
For years, police have been trying to trace indiscriminate firearms discharge in populated areas, Like around New Year's day.
They have sensors.
But they sure want their secrets kept secret, no?
Nah, we are not stupid.
We are greedy. Pure and simple, selfish greedy.
The ones in control are happy as long as they can privatize the gains and socialize the loss.
A handsome profit, and a mess, is made in the fracking process.
One wants the profit, but wants to leave the mess to the other.
The four boxes of liberty are dusted off for use.
Nah, not stupidity. Greed.
Its been going on longer than we have recorded history.
Its in our nature.
The Bible is full of it.
I am not proud of it. But its in all of us. Me included.
Well, maybe a little modest.
It has had two complete brake re-do's, that is complete changeout of the entire braking system.
It needs a re-upholstery job bad. I have been making do with seat covers for years, but you really hope never to see what's under them.
Two paint jobs and ready for the third.
Two water pumps, an alternator, and a radiator - and I could consider all of them kinda minor repairs the way this car is made. Not much more problem than changing a headlight.
Oh yes, a dozen or so light bulbs, batteries, occasional points, spark plugs, and tire changes because the old ones rotted... the car is not heavy so I really have to work on it to wear a tire out.
All in all, I really like that old car. It shows beautiful quality of design.
I just ( this year ) bought several VISIO 22" TV's to replace the old NEC Multisync VGA monitors I have had in use for 20 years.
The Multisyncs still work. But they are not nearly as sharp, nor would they work as a TV, and a heckuva lot heaver. I am still wondering what to do with the multisyncs.. I will probably take them apart for their high-voltage video and deflection transistors, as well as a handful of high voltage diodes, capacitors, and various magnetics. Their 20 year old CRT's are all suffering from cathode emission degradation, subsequently can no longer give as sharp of image as they once did. My hat is off to the engineering team who designed these things. They have done their job very well.
It looks like my old LaserJet 2 will go when its toner runs out. Its plastics are getting quite brittle after 20 years exposure to ozone. It prints graphics at a glacial pace compared to my later machines. It has been a good machine. I doubt its replacement will last as long, but then, neither will I.
Top of the list goes to Toyota, who made me a car some 35 years ago, that has hauled me half a million miles with little more than oil changes and brake pads. The car shows the wear of old age which I attempt to disguise with new paint. The key is so worn it barely stays in the lock, but the car runs like a top. Its a simple little car: carburetor, points, manual transmission. I figure that car will be like the grandfather clock in the song that runs till the old man dies - in this case... me.
At the bottom of my list is the clowns who designed the valving for my kitchen sink. They did a great job concealing the leakage from a failing seal so it would drip somewhere I would not see it. I smelled it one day, when I had growths of mold and mildew all over where the water had puddled for years under the kitchen sink. Neatly hidden under a shelf. Major pain in the arse to fix.
Clowns of like ilk designed the shower valving in the shower, so leakage would be directed back through a little decorative tube into the wall where I would not see it. I did a little pre-emptive hacking with some putty and dammed up the little tube so that any leakage would be forced to drip out at the handle harmlessly falling down to the shower drain.
Just a little foresight in the design phase can sure save a heckuva lot of frustration for everyone else.
I can already see lamp cords with compromised insulation wreaking all sorts of havoc with the fire inspector weeks after your visit..
Very likely, a lot of people will do this.
The hotels may be setting themselves up for vandalism, much like pay toilets set the janitorial staff up for messes that belong in the toilet.
Which will be less expensive, putting up with the "theft" of power for a laptop, hair dryer, toothbrush, whatever, or discovering and fixing the damage done by patrons driven to vandalism trying to satisfy their needs?
Not to say its right to damage stuff, but its kinda like having a vending machine in the alley where homeless people are camped. You better watch it closely, or you will find its window smashed, all the product gone, and no money in the coin-box.
( Gee, that's my second toilet post today )
So they took all the toilet paper instead.
Ah, Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream....
That would be very welcome...
Boy does that old music ever bring back some happy times in my life.
I thought it would be soooo cool for us old fogies to queue up our favorites at the table while dining, or even bring in our favorites being the place was already licensed anyway, and would not face the wrath of the mafiaa.
That sounds just like a job long ago for a restauranteur.
.MP3 requests for a DOS MP3 player, but the owner had other vendors in mind.
He wanted one of those hi-tech looking displays showing his food, menus, and prices. He had the "high tech display": his projection TV.
What he ended up with was his old PC-AT home computer yanked from a pile in his garage and loaded with a bunch of GIF's and JPG's he created to his heart's content on his nicer home computer. Loaded all the images he wanted to display in a subdirectory, along with a DOS slideshow program. A little edit of Autoexec.bat and config.sys, and every time the computer was turned on, all it knew to do was start the slideshow and run it until power was turned off at the end of the day.
It was a no-brainer being he plugged the whole shebang into his beer-sign lighting circuit. There was no change to the routine for his help in opening shop for business. When they turned on the beer-sign circuit as usual, his "high tech display" would start up and run until they turned off the beersign lights at the end of the day.
He was aware of the limitations of the system, so he made his images with that in mind. He could create anything he wanted for it to display, with no more intervention from me.
He seemed happy enough. He was ready to toss it all anyway, and all it cost him was a dinner for me and my buddy.
I wanted so bad to do something for a '50s style diner in my area to retrofit those table-controlled jukeboxes as a serial terminal so I could queue up
That would have been fun, as I wanted to keep all the old vacuum tube amplifiers running, and even the record selector, but what would actually go through the system would be a MP3, not what was coming off the tone arm... the spinning record being "played" would be just for show. It would not make any difference at all what 45rpm record was in the slot... its just there for people to reminisce seeing things behave and hearing that 120Hz hum in it, just like it did when they, like I, was a kid.
I could rip all the MP3's I needed because he already had licenses from all the copyright people to play copyrighted music in his place. So I could load up the machine with anything. I thought it would be a nice touch if he kept his customer's favorites on the machine, as well as honoring requests. I even have an old mechanical typewriter so I could make more of those tags for the table units so they still looked like they came from the '50s.
Boy, did I ever date myself with this post.
< embarrassed > I stand corrected. And greets to +ORC
Yes. I regularly "hack" my old stuff.
Fer cryin' out loud, they even gave me schematics!
I guess in those days they figured if you were knowledgeable enough to buy their thing, by golly you probably had the skills to fix it too.
It was TEST equipment, meaning you were connecting it to God knows what, where only God knew what malfunctions were in it. This is a sure-fire recipe for an occasional fireworks display on the bench.
Those were the days. I am glad I didn't miss them.
I learned more from fixing my test equipment than I ever learned from books and exams. And I got to learn from the best... Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard.
Like you pointed out, the BGA ( even those surface-mount IC's ) did it in for me. I could not get test prods on them, much less remove/replace them, even if I could get my hands on what soon became custom ASIC's.
The new stuff is either factory-support or downright disposables.
Those were the days. Thanks for another trip down memory lane.
So, coin your own algorithm.
Aren't guessing games fun? There's millions of ways to do this... Guess which one I am using!
The first thing I thought while I was loading this topic was steganography. So I asked my browser to find this word and discovered you beat me to it.
A really good question now is how do you allow any internet traffic at all? Nearly anything can be encoded with steganographic information.
There was one guy on the net a few years ago named "Fravia" that went on in detail how to make steganographic communications programs on the fly. Wonderful work.
After reading his essays, which he so graciously shared with the world, I knew every hardcore computer oriented freedom fighter would archive his works. This technology would assure that as long as there was communication at all, no repressive regime would be able to censor it, or even know what was going on right under their nose.
When I was younger, hormones were raging more, and it was kinda a status thing to have a "trophy" mate.
I did not succeed in getting one.
Now, I don't really want one all that much. I see my married friends, and many of them are tolerating each other trying to avoid the expense of dissolving the whole thing.
If I found someone I loved, I would take her.
But a "trophy"? Forget it! They are way way way more trouble than they are worth. The maintenance on those things are the biggest pain in the arse you will ever see.
At this stage of my life, I choose my friends like I choose my tools. If they are good, sturdy, and reliable - they are good to have around. If they are flashy and finicky, they aren't worth a damm and everybody wants to steal it anyway. Let 'em have it.
By now, I treasure a good comfortable pair of jeans far more than some suit that itches and pinches and threatens to tear every time I do anything.
I guess Spock of "Star Trek" laid it out pretty clear for me when he advised one of his competitors for a woman that he would find "having" not at all like "wanting".
Yes, lowered expectations,
It was kinda like my conversation with a frustrated neighbor telling me the spark coils for his Mercedes were running $1000 a pop, and there were eight of them in the car,,, I was looking at my old toyota and noting I had over 300K miles on it. I never have had to mess with the coil, although I did admit I needed a set of points for it every 100K miles or so. That old car is so simple and reliable, I would not even think of trading it for his fancy, expensive car. I will probably have that old car for the rest of my life. I have no desire for a fancy car that will bring no joy to me, just a pain in the side needing all sorts of "authorized service" to "protect my investment", so as not to "invalidate my warranty".
I finally realized -- I had it right when I was a little kid and was corrected for introducing my cousin's husband-to-be as her "finance". It created lots of laughter, before concerned individuals corrected me and told me the correct word was "fiance", not "finance".
You know, I had it right.
Consider the marketing angle... that's where the money is.
The people who are opening their wallet to buy are after the snazziest technology they can get. Bragging rights. By golly, they want to have something that everybody else doesn't have.
Lamborghini did not make their profits from their mileage numbers. Anyone who can afford their cars would probably reconsider their purchase if the car failed to pass everything they meet on the freeway.
So the phone won't run an hour between charges... who cares? The guy has already bought spare battery packs and charging apparatus. The phone has already served its purpose if it impressed the hell out of his co-workers during the call in the conference room.
These phones are not designed for the same market that goes to Wal-Mart for jeans.