Hadn't thought of a timer switch for the water heater. Only thing I did was lower the temp to 115F. That seems to be as low as you can go and still have a hot shower. Run the shower at maximum hot. Safer too, can't get scalded.
I really want to go to a solar water heater. But $5000 and up, when a cheap tank is only $350, is too much money. Would take a century to pay that difference back. I want payback times to be no more than 10 years, and that's stretching it. I'll take 5 year paybacks every time, but between 5 and 10 I have to think about it. Mroe than 10, forget it. Just too many other random events can intervene: dramatically improved tech or lower prices, or you might move or yoru house is damaged or destroyed by vandals, fire, tornado, earthquake, or flood. Well, I don't have to worry about a flood, as I refuse to ever live in a flood plain.
I looked into tankless as well. They cost about $1000. But mine is a gas powered unit. To change from tank to tankless, have to put in a larger diameter gas pipe, and a larger diameter flue pipe. The tankless unit is not freestanding, has to hang on a wall. It also needed an electrical outlet. To make all the changes needed to switch added about $500 to the cost. At $1000, switching was a toss up. At $1500, the tank wins.
At any rate, the new tank is way more efficient, using about half the energy of the old one that was made in the 80s and lasted 27 years. Only a 6 year warranty, and it's been a bit more than that now. I was hedging, hoping it lasts just long enough that solar will be a good deal by the time it fails.
10 watts is bad. It's also typical. Last time I checked, some 6 years ago, AT&T's U-verse DVR box used about 10 watts while on standby. While 10 watts at a cost of a dollar per month doesn't sound like much, it adds up. If you have 3 game consoles, 3 DVRs, and a bunch of wall warts for recharging cell phones and whatever other battery powered devices you have, you could be spending $10 per month. And why burn it if a better design can work just as well and not use so much energy?
I have done a lot to cut my power use. And it's made a big difference. Went from about 10,000 KwH per year to 5,000 KwH. You don't get there by ignoring 10 watts. I did it by living with higher temps in the summer and lower in the winter (83F and 68F respectively). That was the biggest. Even after that, heating and cooling is still by far my biggest energy user, accounting for about 50% of my total usage. Have always had heavy drapes. But it's always frustrated me just how bad the cookie cutter house I have is for keeping temperatures comfortable without wasting megawatts of energy. The moronic builders put the outdoor part of the A/C on the west side of the house. Those guys who want to sell the expensive double pane windows could never justify the price. 30 year payback? Not doing that. I changed all the incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent, and now am moving to LED, and would like to employ skylights. Have had too many times when the electricity went out while I was in the shower, leaving me in total darkness though it was daylight, as the bathroom is an interior room. A skylight would fix that, and save energy. I got low energy computers, basically laptop designs that were packaged as a desktop. My best one uses 30W max, and that only when running an intense 3D game. If playing video on Youtube, it takes 20W, and if just reading and writing email, it takes 10W. Even so, I have them set to go to sleep after 10 minutes and use almost no power. The best old style desktops with the classic +12/+5/-5 volt power supplies take around 80W. The 80plus program helped with those kinds of power supplies, but it's better to run off a single voltage as laptops do. Another big help was the move from CRTs to flat screens. A CRT uses from 50W to 120W, depending greatly on how bright an image it's displaying and the resolution. Early flat screens use 30W no matter what's being displayed, and now with LED backlighting, that's down to 20W. In 1996, refrigerators took a big leap forward in efficiency. Unfortunately, we had a 1995 model. Finally ditched it, and got one that's twice as efficient. Another appliance that used an unexpected high amount of power while off was the Maytag gas drier of all things. 5W while "off" and doing nothing! Felt warm to the touch on top.
My mother has Alz, which has become severe now. I think she still remembers me, but maybe not. It's hard to really know. She doesn't know anyone's name anymore, and her speech has become fragmentary.
Big Pharma may have caused or contributed to her condition. About 15 years ago, this Hormone Replacement Therapy, for women only, became quite popular. My mother was given this treatment. Then some more information about HRT came out. Seems the treatment doubles the risk of the patient developing dementia. It might also increase the chance of breast cancer, and cause hearing loss. The HRT treatments and drugs were quietly stopped and dropped, pretty much without explanation.
The issue is complicated. Newer research suggests that whiel synthetic versions of estrogen increase the chance of dementia, perhaps the exact molecule decreases that risk. What to believe?
I seriously considered buying a Fiesta. The current one is actually a European vehicle, not an American one. Most European small cars are actually decent, though they have had their share of lemons. Today, maybe a cut below the Japanese on quality, but good enough. I have a 1960s Ford Anglia and Ford Cortina, made in England, and they've been quality cars. Hopelessly obsolete by today's standards of course, but for their time, quite good. Once had a 1970 British Leyland Austin America, which was very innovative and far ahead of its time. Had a sideways mounted engine and an automatic transaxle, which is standard fare on small cars today, but was very radical in 1970, and a suspension system that was halfway to being a lowrider, no shocks or springs. But the execution was poor and the thing broke down constantly. One design idea that proved to be a very bad one was that it didn't have separate transmission fluid, it used engine oil for that. Even if you changed the oil far more frequently than usual, maybe every 1000 miles, the transmission would still fail quickly, lasting maybe only 1 year. In short, that car was a lemon.
Sadly, even the good quality small cars didn't sell that well in America, thanks to the American contempt of small. That contempt does several things. You can get a good quality used small car in the US for quite cheap, because no one thinks they're worth anything. Though they and parts for them are harder to find. You can expect that the previous owner will have treated the car badly. Most of the time, I also find it useful that people can't see past the size of my car, and assume I must be dirt poor. Surely no one would choose to drive such a pathetic car if they could afford "better". Where that gets rough is with the ladies. Be prepared to have a lot of dates be one time only, because after she sees the car, she runs away. I always wanted to ask those ladies why they hate the environment, and force men to wow and woo them with big, impressive, expensive cars, but figured there was no use. I consoled myself with the thought that I wouldn't want a gold digger anyway.
Anyway, what killed the Fiesta for me was that Ford did not offer the combination of the 1L 3 cylinder engine with the automatic transmission. Can get the 1L engine with a standard, or the automatic with a bigger engine. I have no problem driving a standard, but others in the family cannot. Now it's too late, the reasons for buying the car have gone away. My plan now is to drive the Chevy Metro I have until it falls apart, then I'll switch to electric. I'm hopeful that the Metro buys me enough time to see significant improvement in electric cars, to the point that they are poised to sweep combustion engine cars off the market.
A good thought, because it was the terrible Chevy diesels of the 1970s that killed the US market for diesel cars, No one would try a diesel, from any manufacturer, after Chevy screwed them up.
US auto manufacturers have earned a well deserved bad reputation on little cars. They won't make a decent quality little car. I like little cars, but I won't buy a little GM, Ford, or Chrysler, unless it's a rebranding of a Japanese or Korean car. Can GM overcome the American contempt of little cars, and actually make one that's decent quality?
The cheater here is Microsoft, not any of us. Microsoft has committed many crimes. It is a convicted monopolist. It deserved to be convicted. And it's totally unapologetic and lacking remorse, Obviously, the punishment wasn't harsh enough. You talk as if poor, poor MS is bleeding to death, when the facts are that it has vast reserves of money and its chief, Bill Gates, has frequently been the wealthiest individual in the world.
Microsoft's cheating is far more egregious than the supposed cheating of all the software pirates in the world.. Remember the Microsoft Tax? Many people, including myself, paid for a copy of Windows we never used or in some cases even received. That's only one of the many, many dirty things MS has done over the years. At the least, MS owes everyone several free copies of Windows.
But that's a bandaid on the real problem, which is the brokenness of the entire business model of selling copies of software. Copyright is dying. MS should understand that. If they don't, it speaks very poorly of their technological understanding and prowess. I suspect they do, and made a deliberate decision to align themselves with the few other copyright extremists in the world, who are mostly in Big Media and Big Pharma, but also includes Monsanto. It was an extremely anti-social move. They used and abused copyright, doing such monstrous things as creating the BSA, and encouraging disgruntled employees to rat out their employers for supposed copyright infringement. Instead of standing against Disney's attempts to steal from the public domain with their lobbying for copyright extension, MS joined them! They loudly announce that they view everyone else in the world, you, me, and all our relatives, friends, and associates, as software pirates. No one should take that. I am NOT going to accept being accused of piracy, when it is the laws that are in the wrong. If copyright is abolished, then there's no more piracy, no more infringement. MS could have been at the forefront of new business models and technology, instead they chose to align with the reactionaries who will not admit that copyrivght needs major reform if not total abolishment.
You're scaring me. You wear your chains willingly, and mock people who protest. Slave.
It's been said that Steam is DRM done right. All who think that don't appreciate that the only amount of DRM that is okay or right is none at all! If it's possible for DRM to shut down legitimately purchased games, no matter the circumstances, that's wrong. The only good DRM is dead DRM.
And don't confuse keeping track of accomplishments with DRM, like some others in this thread.
Punishment should never be the first option. Another option is to equip cars with governers that make it impossible to speed. Why can cars even exceed the maximum speed limit? For those rare emergencies, like rushing the pregnant wife to the hospital to give birth? Or, could simply put in such a small engine so that the car's maximum speed is only 80 mph. In concert with this, roads could be better standardized.
I've driven through many a small town that went below and beyond the speed trap and had something really funky. Maybe some really screwball intersection, or an antiquated and very bumpy block still using the bricks it was originally paved with in the 19th century, parallel parking in the middle of the road, or a brand new elementary school right up against the highway, or something else that leaves you scratching your head wondering what where they thinking. The towns act as if they have the right to do anything they want, and can just make a total mess of the highway. It's always a good idea to take it real slow the first time through a strange town, until you figure out the ropes. The problem is sometimes avoided by building an expensive bypass around the whole strange town and their strange citizens, rather than fight whatever wackos they've elected to run the place. You just don't know if the mayor is the kind of guy who also has a side business in some sort of automobile service, and is actually counting on the neglected roads to bring him more business. That's how automobiling used to be in the early days around 1920. Towns could and would screw up highway signs, and pull other dirty tricks to milk travelers out of their money.
There's just too much potential for corruption. Red light cameras are a perfect example of this fad of trying to monetize law enforcement. We have an entire prison industrial complex exerting undue and improper influence on our laws and policies.
Employers are to blame for the mess. It's been an employers' market for years now, and they still aren't satisfied?! Affordable Healthcare relieves them of the burden of handling employee health insurance themselves, but many don't like it. They actually preferred having that as another hold on employees. Be a real shame if you and your whole family lost your health insurance, wouldn't it? You will do what it takes, even if that means putting in 80 hour weeks for the next 6 months, won't you?
On B, it's pretty crappy to put the burden on candidates to train for positions they might not get. Especially when the training wanted is very esoteric. Learning on the job is something many are quite capable of doing, but employers won't even accept that arrangement. Nor will they admit that closely related experience is relevant. Seems the only people companies are willing to train are cheap foreign replacements.
I have to agree on D. It's not startups exactly, it's failing companies. Startups merely experience higher rates of failure. Working on a sinking ship is horrible. As management desperation increases, what fairness and good sense they have vanishes. They began demanding extreme performance, asking for long hours with no extra pay, refusing to see that even if they get it, it won't be enough to save the company. They can turn very abusive. They also look for scapegoats. Soon they're blaming everyone but themselves. They make examples of people, firing some hapless low level employees on trumped up baseless reasons, just in case anyone doesn't get it. You're going to sweat visibly to give 110%, or they will fire you. Then for the grand finale, they don't tell anyone they've run out of money until they can't make payroll, screwing everyone out of a month of pay, and having the nerve to whine that the employees not only shouldn't complain about being cheated, but should feel sorry for them that their glorious vision didn't work out. Their pain is more important! And maybe everyone should keep on working for free in the faint hope that soon fortunes will make a dramatic u-turn and the company will profit enough to pay all the back pay.
Employers also engage in illegal and unfair hiring practices. All this talk of not beimg able to find competent people is simply not true, and is only cover for the real reasons. If they want to, they can always find a reason why someone won't do. And too often, they want to. Often they've already settled on a hire, who can be some incompetent doofus who is related to the boss. They are merely going through the motions of interviewing others, to satisfy the EEOC, knowing that they have no intention of hiring any of them.
Another thing I find hilarious is the recruiter. First those guys are in a big hurry to shove candidates into any job vaguely related to their skills, then once they get a hit, rather than go to bat for their candiadte, they're all over lhe candidate to do the heavy work to win that position. They demand that the candidate heavily alter the resume to the point of outright lies, and say all the right things. Some of the modifications they demand are just plain stupid, but they expect you to shut up and do it if you want a job. The candidates who refuse to cooperate in the mangling of their own resumes are dropped faster than a hot potato, because there are plenty more candidates where they came from.
Is it even a real issue? Cynicism suggests that the idea of teaching programming in grade school is a great way to employ some CS grads as teachers, lesson planners, and system administrators and the like, for a while, until it fails miserably and everyone becomes disillusioned with the idea. Businesses, especially tech companies, think that if this works, they can drive down the cost of labor even more,
I think that it could work, but it's too early. Ancient civilizations didn't teach literacy to everyone for a variety of reasons. For one, languages were harder to learn. Hieroglyphics is harder than a phonetic language. Our programming languages are still in the hieroglyphics stage. They're full of boilerplate, excess verbiage, redundancy, and tedious details that obscure what a program really does. Some of our best algorithms textbooks use pseudocode because that's the only way they can omit irrelevant detail. Those that use a real programming language struggle to keep the code brief.
You know one thing that can be done for a faster boot? Without systemd, that is? Roll your own kernel, containing only the drivers for the hardware that the system actually has. Strip it down. Strip out all the other cruft, like support for file systems that you are not going to use. And, this is the critical part, make them all part of the kernel, not modules. Don't even have modules.
No dsitro that I know of goes this exact direction. Gentoo sort of does.. Distros go as generic and inclusive as possible so that their one-size-fits-all system will work on almost any hardware out there.
I wonder why no one has created tools to probe the hardware and generate a suitable kernel config file, and actually automate this into building a custom kernel for the user, as part fo the system installation and update process. make localmodconfig is as close as it gets right now.
Some CS grads are shockingly narrow. Too focused on the technical details, and never get a broader education, as can happen with a BS degree rather than a BA. They can bang out C++ code with the best code monkeys, but they are confused about evolution and science itself, can't sort obvious propaganda from fact, and think they aren't being devout if they don't believe in Creationism. Ask them if they think science is just another religion, and they aren't sure. An appropriate course to clear all that up wasn't part of their curriculum. To be fair, they should have learned that in high school. But then, high school fails students on a number of subjects.
Red light cameras are a money grab. Safety is just an excuse. A former CEO of RedFlex, the contractor Chicago engaged to run their red light cameras, as well as an employee of the city of Chicago, and a few others have been indicted on corruption charges over these cameras.
First, make sure the cameras are functioning correctly. That includes stopping authorities from tinkering with them to boost violations. These devices have been very erratic, more erratic than can be explained by technical glitches.
Next, make sure that the yellow is an acceptable duration. There's an informal standard of 1 second per 10 mph of speed limit. Studies show that's not quite enough. There's also a lower limit of 3 seconds, Can't have the yellow shorter than that. The only formal standard on this is circa 1977, a rather involved formula that takes into account the slope of the approaches, as well as the speed limit. May also have something for whether there is a curve on the approach. We don't have anything more, most likely for political reasons. A few times, cities have shortened the yellow, and been caught. Now they search out badly timed lights that already have too short yellows, so they can deny that they shortened the yellow.
Getting punitive about a problem should be the last resort. Every other solution should be tried first. Even worse is making up a problem to get punitive about. There is no epidemic of red light running for the simple reason that nature may deal out a far harsher punishment to violators than a traffic ticket, and everyone understands that. You want to get your car wrecked? Break some bones? Risk death? Then run those red lights! The majority of red light violations are for missing the light by under 1 second, and nearly no violations are over 3 seconds. Punishing people over a 1 second judgment call is unfair. A few more violations are for honestly not seeing the traffic light, and sometimes that can't be entirely blamed on the driver. Years ago, I saw a traffic light a little ways west of the small downtown that was thoroughly obscured by trees (Olney, TX on state hwy 114). It was not visible at more than 20 feet, and the intersection was not in any way distinct from the dozen or so intersections on either side that didn't have traffic lights. The city should have gotten in trouble for that. Only reason I was able to stop for it is because I knew the light was there and was watching for it. Another town (Charles City IA, US 218, before the bypass was built) had 3 lights in a row, in which the 2 at the ends were on arms hanging over the street, but the middle one was on a post and was somewhat camoflaged by buildings, signs, and other lights. Of course they were mistimed so that the middle turned red at the same time the other 2 turned green. Tricky. Only a very few violations are deliberate, and even there, the driver could have good reason, like being on the way to the emergency room.
What happens when intersections are run fairly is that red light violations drop so low that cities take the camers down to save money.
People should send their phones back and demand they fix it or give their money back
I wish! We could bring bad actors to heel very, very quickly if we were willing to boycott. But somehow, a whole bunch of people never get word, and a whole bunch more can't be bothered to participate even if they agree. It's really amazing how much people tolerate. Lots still buy gasoline from BP, still let Bank of America invent new charges to drain their bank accounts, still suffer Comcast's dreadful cable TV service. What does it take to drive those customers away?
I've come to a more nuanced view on patent trolls. They aren't themselves so evil, they are basically hackers, but of the law instead of tech. The real evil is the patent system itself, not the hackers who take advantage of it. If by their actions they persuade giants like Samsung that patent law needs major reform, then that's good. It's not their fault that patent law is such a mess, it's the fault of giant corporate backers. They're dancing delicately, trying to have it both ways, that is, little people have to ask them for their patents, but they don't have to ask little people for theirs. The bigs are the reason the scope of patent law has been expanded beyond all sense. Possibly the biggest expansion was that originally a patent was supposed to cover a working implementation. A machine that achieves the same thing through a different method was not in violation. Now patents can cover a vague concept. That kind of patent may be shot down in court, but that it was granted at all is one of the problems.
Hating a small patent troll is like shooting the messenger.
Yes. No matter how much propaganda is clothed in science, it is not science. Propagandists know very well that science has a stellar reputation. All the time, they want to pass off their lies as scientific fact. These days, that works far better than claiming that the Bible says so. Science's very reputation works against it in this matter, causes it to be used more than anything else as a vehicle for lies. People have to be constantly on guard to separate lies dressed as science from real science.
The profit motive warps far too much scientific endeavor. Over and over, studies that could finger some chemical or process as harmful are squashed, suppressed before they can be carried out. Obesity is certainly a case in point. The victims have been blamed for being too lazy or gluttonous. Another convenient scapegoat is genetics, which is patently ridiculous as our grandparents weren't suffering obesity in anything like the current percentages. Other explanations were at best overlooked, which would make this one of the biggest and most incredible cases of mass blindness. More like, explanations such as that it's the food, were purposely buried. It took things like the Supersize Me movie to break the silence. Only recently are suspects such as Bisphenol A being noticed. Our cities, especially newer suburban cities, are very hostile to walking, largely for political reasons. Many people want everyone to need a car to get around. Requiring an expensive item is a great way to keep out poor riffraff, and cutting down on opportunities for exercise is just an unfortunate side effect.
People aren't fat because they choose to be that way. No one wants to live with the intense social stigma of being obese. In all the propaganda and politics being flung around, this basic fact get quickly covered up. Why then are people fat? It's because their bodies and environment drive them to eat too much and/or exercise too little, and that in turn is partly caused by disruptions of the body's endocrines, and perhaps also the body's microbiota.
Let's hope that it stays safe to say things in support of due process, fairness, understanding, and moderation on such a charged subject, and that doing so is not willfully construed as favoring pedophilia. Freedom of speech, right? Some people seem awfully anxious to demonize pedophiles, to the point of mob hysteria. It looks like some of the tough talk on child molestation is out of fear, so that the mob doesn't turn on them. It's like that old SNL skit, the Church Lady, asking her guests if they hate Satan.
Pedophilia has a long history. The Roman Emperor Hadrian, one of their best, had a favorite greek boy. However, Roman Emperors were notorious for excess, and certainly don't make a good choice if one wants average people. There are still older customs. In early Iron Age battles, the winning commander might rape the losing one. Why? Maybe to demonstrate as graphically as possible that he was victorious and to humiliate the loser even more if that was possible, maybe as a severe punishment to further inspire other commanders to do all they could to win or die. The Bible is full of divine punishment for "deviant" sexual behavior, in particular the fates of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Could some instances of pedophilia be consequences of disease? For instance, there's Toxoplasma gondii. I find it amazing that a parasite can hack an animal's brain so subtly, removing the fear of cats and only cats, while largely leaving other brain functions intact. If that's possible, why not a disease that makes people have pedophilic urges?
I can't see anything wrong with using drawings of children, or blow up dolls, or whatever other harmless substitute may be available. Especially if that keeps a pedo from harming real children.
It was private railroad limitations and greed that spurred the creation of the public highway system.
Now in the US, all that's left of passenger rail service is Amtrak, plus a small resurgence of local subway and light rail service in large cities. Amtrak is terrible. Very expensive, slow, late, and poor coverrage. To get from California to Texas by passenger rail, they are likely to try to route you the long way around, through Chicago.
I've looked into bringing a car from Mexico to the US. Latin America has lots of models that aren't available in the US, such as the Ford Ka. Unfortunately, US safety standards thoroughly "cock block" that idea. It can be done, but it's not worth doing. A car made to Mexican safety standards, such as they are, I think can be driven in the US by Mexican owners, but can't be simply bought and driven by US citizens. A US citizen can't pop down to Mexico, buy one of these cars and just drive it back to the US and get it all properly titled and licensed. No, it has to be brought up to US safety standards, which means thousands of dollars of work to strengthen the B pillars and other areas of the passenger compartment. Then the owner might want to think about hot rodding the car a bit to compensate for all the extra weight those safety modifications added.
The big exception to safety standards is the antique car. It can be heavily modified, but so long as the owner has a title to one of the real things, he can say it counts as whatever the original car was.. A US citizen can legally drive a "T-bucket" (a highly modified Model T). It's dangerous but legal. So what many automobile experimenters do is get the shell of an antique, and stick whatever power train they want in it.
You're looking at it wrong. Replace the corporations!
Set up solar and wind power with batteries, disconnect from the grid and fire your scumbag monopolistic electric company. Get an electric car, and destroy your Exxon Mobil credit card. Get a 3D printer and make your own household goods, including robot servants. Join with your neighbors to set up your own ISP as a public utility. Of course, freely download all your entertainment, and ram home the message to Hollywood that copyright is dead. Take a leaf from your great grandparents and have your robots grow your own vegetable garden so you can tell the grocery chain you won't need them any more either. Have the robots do "new homespun" too, and make your clothes for you, in exactly the right size and style and color you want. And put in a well and a septic system so you can tell the city to shove their endless rate hikes for sewage and water. Obtain a robot surgeon and an expert system diagnostician, and tell your doctors that their outrageous billing practices are history.
using obscure syntax and constructs to save a couple of lines, sacrificing readability and maintainability.
But that's one of the paradoxes. Saving a couple of lines reduces eye clutter. What's obscure to you may be obvious to an expert in that language. Shorter is usually better.
What makes Perl difficult to read is the same thing that brought Perl to prominence, the regular expressions. People went nuts for regular expressions, and overused them. The Camel book warns readers about that. People are used to skimming through code quickly, because so much of it really is boilerplate. But you can't quickly skim regular expressions except the trivial ones. You have to study each symbol. Miss one backslash, and the entire meaning changes. I think the other big complaint about Perl is that the language overuses sigils. Having a $ in front of every scalar variable name is tiresome for both coder and maintainer. Adds visual clutter. Smacks very much of putting the compiler writer's convenience ahead of the application programmer, a sin committed in many languages. Why couldn't they use plain names? C did that, it's not hard, just need to reserve a few words, for example, don't allow a variable to be named "if".
What's that saying that's used to justify spying on everyone? "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear".
You can't divorce security from ethics, because so much of security does not make everyone safer, it often makes a small group safer from the public, and that may not be in the public interest. Security against viruses is good for everyone but the few who want to use viruses to the detriment of the infected. Security against "pirates" is much more controversial, as "pirates" too often means everyone else. MS tried propaganda and strong arm tactics to pass off Windows Genuine Advantage as security for users. That was an insult to our intelligence, and a lie. Worse were Sony's music CDs with the root kit. I wonder if any of the leaked info has details about that, perhaps puts names to the people who decided make Sony's own CDs help spread viruses, including their own? With tax season around the corner, and Turbo Tax in the news again for anti-social behavior, the stunt they pulled a decade ago is worth mentioning again. Their "security" measures in their software screwed with the boot sector of their users' hard drives, risking the loss of all their users' data, in order to "protect" their software from piracy with, once again, DRM that does not work.
If you're a security expert, what do you do when you're asked to help cover something up, something that may be criminal and/or dangerous? Or, you're asked to use your knowledge to help make everyone less secure, by, for example, designing a root kit for music CDs? Blow the whistle, or follow orders? Whichever way you go could be trouble. Lose your career because no one wants to hire a whistleblower, and the government does a bad job of protecting whistleblowers, or lose your freedom when you are implicated in the cover up and sent to prison for it? Maybe you can blow the whistle without blowing your cover. No one was sure who Deep Throat was until long after Watergate. For the example of the root kit on the music CDs, you might make a judgment call. You would understand that this is a variation of DRM that will still be ineffective, the root kit is a clumsy idea, and therefore is unlikely to do much damage to the public. The outcome can only be what actually did happen, which is that the root kit was soon noticed and the only harm of significance was self inflicted harm when Sony lost much trust and was forced to recall all the infected CDs. So, your best course of action was likely some form of CYA, documents that you warned management that the root kit was a very bad idea, and that you were going ahead with it only under protest. You could still be blamed and fired of course. Maybe management will believe the root kit would have worked if not for your "treachery" in deliberately doing an incompetent job, despite any words anyone else tells them to the contrary.
Not necessarily. There's cheating to factor in. The people may have actually voted otherwise, but some incumbents abuse their power to rig the election. That's what's going on in the US. Bush should never have won the presidency. Currently, the majority of North Carolina's representatives should be Democratics, instead, most are Republicans. Republicans have been engaging in a number of tactics to tilt the vote their way. Gerrymandering is something both sides have done for decades, but in recent years the Republicans have pushed their cheats more. They make sure there aren't enough voting machines in districts that lean democratic, and they manufacture a problem with voter fraud and use that as the excuse to kick people off voter registration lists and pass these photo ID laws. They even try to intimidate voters in democratic districts with big scary warnings that cheating at the polls is a felony for which you could spend 10 years in jail. Anyone who believes that threat is not going to take a chance like that, better not to vote at all. The courts struck that one down, but there are many other tactics. Crosscheck is a big one. Voters have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be allowed to vote. Recently in Texas, a 4th choice was added for voters who want to vote straight party ticket. Used to be R, D, and Libertarian. Now there is... Green! How did the Green party gain enough strength to do that? Perot's Reform party is not on the ballot, and he's from Texas. Answer: the Greens aren't strong enough, the Republicans put them on the ballot, figuring that would split the Democratic vote.
The worst part is that the Republicans who do this crap have very limited understanding and not much intelligence. They really seem to think it's okay for them to cheat. The end justifies the means, you know. But no one else better cheat, no sir! If they were smarter, they would understand that cheating is destructive. Instead, they behave as if "might is right" and that winning any way you can, even by cheating, is acceptable, and indeed a show of strength. The other guys were too "wimpy" to use the same "aggressive" tactics, so they deserved to lose! They've even convinced themselves that they aren't really cheating. It's how they can sound like such straight shooters even while their pants are on fire. That last is all part of their overall campaign against reality, science, and reason. For me, one of the most telling moments was the night of the 2012 election, when Romney's gang chose to believe slanted polls and propaganda that showed he was going to win, rather than the best, most unbiased polls which showed that he was losing, and then the actual results, in which he lost.
If China were to put a man on the moon, that might be enough. If they also announce that was only the first step to eventually colonizing Mars, for themselves, the rubes would suddenly demand we get there first.
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Hadn't thought of a timer switch for the water heater. Only thing I did was lower the temp to 115F. That seems to be as low as you can go and still have a hot shower. Run the shower at maximum hot. Safer too, can't get scalded.
I really want to go to a solar water heater. But $5000 and up, when a cheap tank is only $350, is too much money. Would take a century to pay that difference back. I want payback times to be no more than 10 years, and that's stretching it. I'll take 5 year paybacks every time, but between 5 and 10 I have to think about it. Mroe than 10, forget it. Just too many other random events can intervene: dramatically improved tech or lower prices, or you might move or yoru house is damaged or destroyed by vandals, fire, tornado, earthquake, or flood. Well, I don't have to worry about a flood, as I refuse to ever live in a flood plain.
I looked into tankless as well. They cost about $1000. But mine is a gas powered unit. To change from tank to tankless, have to put in a larger diameter gas pipe, and a larger diameter flue pipe. The tankless unit is not freestanding, has to hang on a wall. It also needed an electrical outlet. To make all the changes needed to switch added about $500 to the cost. At $1000, switching was a toss up. At $1500, the tank wins.
At any rate, the new tank is way more efficient, using about half the energy of the old one that was made in the 80s and lasted 27 years. Only a 6 year warranty, and it's been a bit more than that now. I was hedging, hoping it lasts just long enough that solar will be a good deal by the time it fails.
10 watts is bad. It's also typical. Last time I checked, some 6 years ago, AT&T's U-verse DVR box used about 10 watts while on standby. While 10 watts at a cost of a dollar per month doesn't sound like much, it adds up. If you have 3 game consoles, 3 DVRs, and a bunch of wall warts for recharging cell phones and whatever other battery powered devices you have, you could be spending $10 per month. And why burn it if a better design can work just as well and not use so much energy?
I have done a lot to cut my power use. And it's made a big difference. Went from about 10,000 KwH per year to 5,000 KwH. You don't get there by ignoring 10 watts. I did it by living with higher temps in the summer and lower in the winter (83F and 68F respectively). That was the biggest. Even after that, heating and cooling is still by far my biggest energy user, accounting for about 50% of my total usage. Have always had heavy drapes. But it's always frustrated me just how bad the cookie cutter house I have is for keeping temperatures comfortable without wasting megawatts of energy. The moronic builders put the outdoor part of the A/C on the west side of the house. Those guys who want to sell the expensive double pane windows could never justify the price. 30 year payback? Not doing that. I changed all the incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent, and now am moving to LED, and would like to employ skylights. Have had too many times when the electricity went out while I was in the shower, leaving me in total darkness though it was daylight, as the bathroom is an interior room. A skylight would fix that, and save energy. I got low energy computers, basically laptop designs that were packaged as a desktop. My best one uses 30W max, and that only when running an intense 3D game. If playing video on Youtube, it takes 20W, and if just reading and writing email, it takes 10W. Even so, I have them set to go to sleep after 10 minutes and use almost no power. The best old style desktops with the classic +12/+5/-5 volt power supplies take around 80W. The 80plus program helped with those kinds of power supplies, but it's better to run off a single voltage as laptops do. Another big help was the move from CRTs to flat screens. A CRT uses from 50W to 120W, depending greatly on how bright an image it's displaying and the resolution. Early flat screens use 30W no matter what's being displayed, and now with LED backlighting, that's down to 20W. In 1996, refrigerators took a big leap forward in efficiency. Unfortunately, we had a 1995 model. Finally ditched it, and got one that's twice as efficient. Another appliance that used an unexpected high amount of power while off was the Maytag gas drier of all things. 5W while "off" and doing nothing! Felt warm to the touch on top.
My mother has Alz, which has become severe now. I think she still remembers me, but maybe not. It's hard to really know. She doesn't know anyone's name anymore, and her speech has become fragmentary.
Big Pharma may have caused or contributed to her condition. About 15 years ago, this Hormone Replacement Therapy, for women only, became quite popular. My mother was given this treatment. Then some more information about HRT came out. Seems the treatment doubles the risk of the patient developing dementia. It might also increase the chance of breast cancer, and cause hearing loss. The HRT treatments and drugs were quietly stopped and dropped, pretty much without explanation.
The issue is complicated. Newer research suggests that whiel synthetic versions of estrogen increase the chance of dementia, perhaps the exact molecule decreases that risk. What to believe?
I seriously considered buying a Fiesta. The current one is actually a European vehicle, not an American one. Most European small cars are actually decent, though they have had their share of lemons. Today, maybe a cut below the Japanese on quality, but good enough. I have a 1960s Ford Anglia and Ford Cortina, made in England, and they've been quality cars. Hopelessly obsolete by today's standards of course, but for their time, quite good. Once had a 1970 British Leyland Austin America, which was very innovative and far ahead of its time. Had a sideways mounted engine and an automatic transaxle, which is standard fare on small cars today, but was very radical in 1970, and a suspension system that was halfway to being a lowrider, no shocks or springs. But the execution was poor and the thing broke down constantly. One design idea that proved to be a very bad one was that it didn't have separate transmission fluid, it used engine oil for that. Even if you changed the oil far more frequently than usual, maybe every 1000 miles, the transmission would still fail quickly, lasting maybe only 1 year. In short, that car was a lemon.
Sadly, even the good quality small cars didn't sell that well in America, thanks to the American contempt of small. That contempt does several things. You can get a good quality used small car in the US for quite cheap, because no one thinks they're worth anything. Though they and parts for them are harder to find. You can expect that the previous owner will have treated the car badly. Most of the time, I also find it useful that people can't see past the size of my car, and assume I must be dirt poor. Surely no one would choose to drive such a pathetic car if they could afford "better". Where that gets rough is with the ladies. Be prepared to have a lot of dates be one time only, because after she sees the car, she runs away. I always wanted to ask those ladies why they hate the environment, and force men to wow and woo them with big, impressive, expensive cars, but figured there was no use. I consoled myself with the thought that I wouldn't want a gold digger anyway.
Anyway, what killed the Fiesta for me was that Ford did not offer the combination of the 1L 3 cylinder engine with the automatic transmission. Can get the 1L engine with a standard, or the automatic with a bigger engine. I have no problem driving a standard, but others in the family cannot. Now it's too late, the reasons for buying the car have gone away. My plan now is to drive the Chevy Metro I have until it falls apart, then I'll switch to electric. I'm hopeful that the Metro buys me enough time to see significant improvement in electric cars, to the point that they are poised to sweep combustion engine cars off the market.
A good thought, because it was the terrible Chevy diesels of the 1970s that killed the US market for diesel cars, No one would try a diesel, from any manufacturer, after Chevy screwed them up.
US auto manufacturers have earned a well deserved bad reputation on little cars. They won't make a decent quality little car. I like little cars, but I won't buy a little GM, Ford, or Chrysler, unless it's a rebranding of a Japanese or Korean car. Can GM overcome the American contempt of little cars, and actually make one that's decent quality?
The cheater here is Microsoft, not any of us. Microsoft has committed many crimes. It is a convicted monopolist. It deserved to be convicted. And it's totally unapologetic and lacking remorse, Obviously, the punishment wasn't harsh enough. You talk as if poor, poor MS is bleeding to death, when the facts are that it has vast reserves of money and its chief, Bill Gates, has frequently been the wealthiest individual in the world.
Microsoft's cheating is far more egregious than the supposed cheating of all the software pirates in the world.. Remember the Microsoft Tax? Many people, including myself, paid for a copy of Windows we never used or in some cases even received. That's only one of the many, many dirty things MS has done over the years. At the least, MS owes everyone several free copies of Windows.
But that's a bandaid on the real problem, which is the brokenness of the entire business model of selling copies of software. Copyright is dying. MS should understand that. If they don't, it speaks very poorly of their technological understanding and prowess. I suspect they do, and made a deliberate decision to align themselves with the few other copyright extremists in the world, who are mostly in Big Media and Big Pharma, but also includes Monsanto. It was an extremely anti-social move. They used and abused copyright, doing such monstrous things as creating the BSA, and encouraging disgruntled employees to rat out their employers for supposed copyright infringement. Instead of standing against Disney's attempts to steal from the public domain with their lobbying for copyright extension, MS joined them! They loudly announce that they view everyone else in the world, you, me, and all our relatives, friends, and associates, as software pirates. No one should take that. I am NOT going to accept being accused of piracy, when it is the laws that are in the wrong. If copyright is abolished, then there's no more piracy, no more infringement. MS could have been at the forefront of new business models and technology, instead they chose to align with the reactionaries who will not admit that copyrivght needs major reform if not total abolishment.
You're scaring me. You wear your chains willingly, and mock people who protest. Slave.
It's been said that Steam is DRM done right. All who think that don't appreciate that the only amount of DRM that is okay or right is none at all! If it's possible for DRM to shut down legitimately purchased games, no matter the circumstances, that's wrong. The only good DRM is dead DRM.
And don't confuse keeping track of accomplishments with DRM, like some others in this thread.
Punishment should never be the first option. Another option is to equip cars with governers that make it impossible to speed. Why can cars even exceed the maximum speed limit? For those rare emergencies, like rushing the pregnant wife to the hospital to give birth? Or, could simply put in such a small engine so that the car's maximum speed is only 80 mph. In concert with this, roads could be better standardized.
I've driven through many a small town that went below and beyond the speed trap and had something really funky. Maybe some really screwball intersection, or an antiquated and very bumpy block still using the bricks it was originally paved with in the 19th century, parallel parking in the middle of the road, or a brand new elementary school right up against the highway, or something else that leaves you scratching your head wondering what where they thinking. The towns act as if they have the right to do anything they want, and can just make a total mess of the highway. It's always a good idea to take it real slow the first time through a strange town, until you figure out the ropes. The problem is sometimes avoided by building an expensive bypass around the whole strange town and their strange citizens, rather than fight whatever wackos they've elected to run the place. You just don't know if the mayor is the kind of guy who also has a side business in some sort of automobile service, and is actually counting on the neglected roads to bring him more business. That's how automobiling used to be in the early days around 1920. Towns could and would screw up highway signs, and pull other dirty tricks to milk travelers out of their money.
There's just too much potential for corruption. Red light cameras are a perfect example of this fad of trying to monetize law enforcement. We have an entire prison industrial complex exerting undue and improper influence on our laws and policies.
Employers are to blame for the mess. It's been an employers' market for years now, and they still aren't satisfied?! Affordable Healthcare relieves them of the burden of handling employee health insurance themselves, but many don't like it. They actually preferred having that as another hold on employees. Be a real shame if you and your whole family lost your health insurance, wouldn't it? You will do what it takes, even if that means putting in 80 hour weeks for the next 6 months, won't you?
On B, it's pretty crappy to put the burden on candidates to train for positions they might not get. Especially when the training wanted is very esoteric. Learning on the job is something many are quite capable of doing, but employers won't even accept that arrangement. Nor will they admit that closely related experience is relevant. Seems the only people companies are willing to train are cheap foreign replacements.
I have to agree on D. It's not startups exactly, it's failing companies. Startups merely experience higher rates of failure. Working on a sinking ship is horrible. As management desperation increases, what fairness and good sense they have vanishes. They began demanding extreme performance, asking for long hours with no extra pay, refusing to see that even if they get it, it won't be enough to save the company. They can turn very abusive. They also look for scapegoats. Soon they're blaming everyone but themselves. They make examples of people, firing some hapless low level employees on trumped up baseless reasons, just in case anyone doesn't get it. You're going to sweat visibly to give 110%, or they will fire you. Then for the grand finale, they don't tell anyone they've run out of money until they can't make payroll, screwing everyone out of a month of pay, and having the nerve to whine that the employees not only shouldn't complain about being cheated, but should feel sorry for them that their glorious vision didn't work out. Their pain is more important! And maybe everyone should keep on working for free in the faint hope that soon fortunes will make a dramatic u-turn and the company will profit enough to pay all the back pay.
Employers also engage in illegal and unfair hiring practices. All this talk of not beimg able to find competent people is simply not true, and is only cover for the real reasons. If they want to, they can always find a reason why someone won't do. And too often, they want to. Often they've already settled on a hire, who can be some incompetent doofus who is related to the boss. They are merely going through the motions of interviewing others, to satisfy the EEOC, knowing that they have no intention of hiring any of them.
Another thing I find hilarious is the recruiter. First those guys are in a big hurry to shove candidates into any job vaguely related to their skills, then once they get a hit, rather than go to bat for their candiadte, they're all over lhe candidate to do the heavy work to win that position. They demand that the candidate heavily alter the resume to the point of outright lies, and say all the right things. Some of the modifications they demand are just plain stupid, but they expect you to shut up and do it if you want a job. The candidates who refuse to cooperate in the mangling of their own resumes are dropped faster than a hot potato, because there are plenty more candidates where they came from.
Is it even a real issue? Cynicism suggests that the idea of teaching programming in grade school is a great way to employ some CS grads as teachers, lesson planners, and system administrators and the like, for a while, until it fails miserably and everyone becomes disillusioned with the idea. Businesses, especially tech companies, think that if this works, they can drive down the cost of labor even more,
I think that it could work, but it's too early. Ancient civilizations didn't teach literacy to everyone for a variety of reasons. For one, languages were harder to learn. Hieroglyphics is harder than a phonetic language. Our programming languages are still in the hieroglyphics stage. They're full of boilerplate, excess verbiage, redundancy, and tedious details that obscure what a program really does. Some of our best algorithms textbooks use pseudocode because that's the only way they can omit irrelevant detail. Those that use a real programming language struggle to keep the code brief.
You know one thing that can be done for a faster boot? Without systemd, that is? Roll your own kernel, containing only the drivers for the hardware that the system actually has. Strip it down. Strip out all the other cruft, like support for file systems that you are not going to use. And, this is the critical part, make them all part of the kernel, not modules. Don't even have modules.
No dsitro that I know of goes this exact direction. Gentoo sort of does.. Distros go as generic and inclusive as possible so that their one-size-fits-all system will work on almost any hardware out there.
I wonder why no one has created tools to probe the hardware and generate a suitable kernel config file, and actually automate this into building a custom kernel for the user, as part fo the system installation and update process. make localmodconfig is as close as it gets right now.
Some CS grads are shockingly narrow. Too focused on the technical details, and never get a broader education, as can happen with a BS degree rather than a BA. They can bang out C++ code with the best code monkeys, but they are confused about evolution and science itself, can't sort obvious propaganda from fact, and think they aren't being devout if they don't believe in Creationism. Ask them if they think science is just another religion, and they aren't sure. An appropriate course to clear all that up wasn't part of their curriculum. To be fair, they should have learned that in high school. But then, high school fails students on a number of subjects.
Red light cameras are a money grab. Safety is just an excuse. A former CEO of RedFlex, the contractor Chicago engaged to run their red light cameras, as well as an employee of the city of Chicago, and a few others have been indicted on corruption charges over these cameras.
First, make sure the cameras are functioning correctly. That includes stopping authorities from tinkering with them to boost violations. These devices have been very erratic, more erratic than can be explained by technical glitches.
Next, make sure that the yellow is an acceptable duration. There's an informal standard of 1 second per 10 mph of speed limit. Studies show that's not quite enough. There's also a lower limit of 3 seconds, Can't have the yellow shorter than that. The only formal standard on this is circa 1977, a rather involved formula that takes into account the slope of the approaches, as well as the speed limit. May also have something for whether there is a curve on the approach. We don't have anything more, most likely for political reasons. A few times, cities have shortened the yellow, and been caught. Now they search out badly timed lights that already have too short yellows, so they can deny that they shortened the yellow.
Getting punitive about a problem should be the last resort. Every other solution should be tried first. Even worse is making up a problem to get punitive about. There is no epidemic of red light running for the simple reason that nature may deal out a far harsher punishment to violators than a traffic ticket, and everyone understands that. You want to get your car wrecked? Break some bones? Risk death? Then run those red lights! The majority of red light violations are for missing the light by under 1 second, and nearly no violations are over 3 seconds. Punishing people over a 1 second judgment call is unfair. A few more violations are for honestly not seeing the traffic light, and sometimes that can't be entirely blamed on the driver. Years ago, I saw a traffic light a little ways west of the small downtown that was thoroughly obscured by trees (Olney, TX on state hwy 114). It was not visible at more than 20 feet, and the intersection was not in any way distinct from the dozen or so intersections on either side that didn't have traffic lights. The city should have gotten in trouble for that. Only reason I was able to stop for it is because I knew the light was there and was watching for it. Another town (Charles City IA, US 218, before the bypass was built) had 3 lights in a row, in which the 2 at the ends were on arms hanging over the street, but the middle one was on a post and was somewhat camoflaged by buildings, signs, and other lights. Of course they were mistimed so that the middle turned red at the same time the other 2 turned green. Tricky. Only a very few violations are deliberate, and even there, the driver could have good reason, like being on the way to the emergency room.
What happens when intersections are run fairly is that red light violations drop so low that cities take the camers down to save money.
People should send their phones back and demand they fix it or give their money back
I wish! We could bring bad actors to heel very, very quickly if we were willing to boycott. But somehow, a whole bunch of people never get word, and a whole bunch more can't be bothered to participate even if they agree. It's really amazing how much people tolerate. Lots still buy gasoline from BP, still let Bank of America invent new charges to drain their bank accounts, still suffer Comcast's dreadful cable TV service. What does it take to drive those customers away?
I've come to a more nuanced view on patent trolls. They aren't themselves so evil, they are basically hackers, but of the law instead of tech. The real evil is the patent system itself, not the hackers who take advantage of it. If by their actions they persuade giants like Samsung that patent law needs major reform, then that's good. It's not their fault that patent law is such a mess, it's the fault of giant corporate backers. They're dancing delicately, trying to have it both ways, that is, little people have to ask them for their patents, but they don't have to ask little people for theirs. The bigs are the reason the scope of patent law has been expanded beyond all sense. Possibly the biggest expansion was that originally a patent was supposed to cover a working implementation. A machine that achieves the same thing through a different method was not in violation. Now patents can cover a vague concept. That kind of patent may be shot down in court, but that it was granted at all is one of the problems.
Hating a small patent troll is like shooting the messenger.
Yes. No matter how much propaganda is clothed in science, it is not science. Propagandists know very well that science has a stellar reputation. All the time, they want to pass off their lies as scientific fact. These days, that works far better than claiming that the Bible says so. Science's very reputation works against it in this matter, causes it to be used more than anything else as a vehicle for lies. People have to be constantly on guard to separate lies dressed as science from real science.
The profit motive warps far too much scientific endeavor. Over and over, studies that could finger some chemical or process as harmful are squashed, suppressed before they can be carried out. Obesity is certainly a case in point. The victims have been blamed for being too lazy or gluttonous. Another convenient scapegoat is genetics, which is patently ridiculous as our grandparents weren't suffering obesity in anything like the current percentages. Other explanations were at best overlooked, which would make this one of the biggest and most incredible cases of mass blindness. More like, explanations such as that it's the food, were purposely buried. It took things like the Supersize Me movie to break the silence. Only recently are suspects such as Bisphenol A being noticed. Our cities, especially newer suburban cities, are very hostile to walking, largely for political reasons. Many people want everyone to need a car to get around. Requiring an expensive item is a great way to keep out poor riffraff, and cutting down on opportunities for exercise is just an unfortunate side effect.
People aren't fat because they choose to be that way. No one wants to live with the intense social stigma of being obese. In all the propaganda and politics being flung around, this basic fact get quickly covered up. Why then are people fat? It's because their bodies and environment drive them to eat too much and/or exercise too little, and that in turn is partly caused by disruptions of the body's endocrines, and perhaps also the body's microbiota.
Let's hope that it stays safe to say things in support of due process, fairness, understanding, and moderation on such a charged subject, and that doing so is not willfully construed as favoring pedophilia. Freedom of speech, right? Some people seem awfully anxious to demonize pedophiles, to the point of mob hysteria. It looks like some of the tough talk on child molestation is out of fear, so that the mob doesn't turn on them. It's like that old SNL skit, the Church Lady, asking her guests if they hate Satan.
Pedophilia has a long history. The Roman Emperor Hadrian, one of their best, had a favorite greek boy. However, Roman Emperors were notorious for excess, and certainly don't make a good choice if one wants average people. There are still older customs. In early Iron Age battles, the winning commander might rape the losing one. Why? Maybe to demonstrate as graphically as possible that he was victorious and to humiliate the loser even more if that was possible, maybe as a severe punishment to further inspire other commanders to do all they could to win or die. The Bible is full of divine punishment for "deviant" sexual behavior, in particular the fates of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Could some instances of pedophilia be consequences of disease? For instance, there's Toxoplasma gondii. I find it amazing that a parasite can hack an animal's brain so subtly, removing the fear of cats and only cats, while largely leaving other brain functions intact. If that's possible, why not a disease that makes people have pedophilic urges?
I can't see anything wrong with using drawings of children, or blow up dolls, or whatever other harmless substitute may be available. Especially if that keeps a pedo from harming real children.
One thing about "begin" and "end" vs curly braces: lots of people do not understand English!
Brevity is also important. Otherwise, why stop at Pascal? Why not embrace Cobol?
It was private railroad limitations and greed that spurred the creation of the public highway system.
Now in the US, all that's left of passenger rail service is Amtrak, plus a small resurgence of local subway and light rail service in large cities. Amtrak is terrible. Very expensive, slow, late, and poor coverrage. To get from California to Texas by passenger rail, they are likely to try to route you the long way around, through Chicago.
I've looked into bringing a car from Mexico to the US. Latin America has lots of models that aren't available in the US, such as the Ford Ka. Unfortunately, US safety standards thoroughly "cock block" that idea. It can be done, but it's not worth doing. A car made to Mexican safety standards, such as they are, I think can be driven in the US by Mexican owners, but can't be simply bought and driven by US citizens. A US citizen can't pop down to Mexico, buy one of these cars and just drive it back to the US and get it all properly titled and licensed. No, it has to be brought up to US safety standards, which means thousands of dollars of work to strengthen the B pillars and other areas of the passenger compartment. Then the owner might want to think about hot rodding the car a bit to compensate for all the extra weight those safety modifications added.
The big exception to safety standards is the antique car. It can be heavily modified, but so long as the owner has a title to one of the real things, he can say it counts as whatever the original car was.. A US citizen can legally drive a "T-bucket" (a highly modified Model T). It's dangerous but legal. So what many automobile experimenters do is get the shell of an antique, and stick whatever power train they want in it.
You're looking at it wrong. Replace the corporations!
Set up solar and wind power with batteries, disconnect from the grid and fire your scumbag monopolistic electric company. Get an electric car, and destroy your Exxon Mobil credit card. Get a 3D printer and make your own household goods, including robot servants. Join with your neighbors to set up your own ISP as a public utility. Of course, freely download all your entertainment, and ram home the message to Hollywood that copyright is dead. Take a leaf from your great grandparents and have your robots grow your own vegetable garden so you can tell the grocery chain you won't need them any more either. Have the robots do "new homespun" too, and make your clothes for you, in exactly the right size and style and color you want. And put in a well and a septic system so you can tell the city to shove their endless rate hikes for sewage and water. Obtain a robot surgeon and an expert system diagnostician, and tell your doctors that their outrageous billing practices are history.
The disruption is going to be fun!
using obscure syntax and constructs to save a couple of lines, sacrificing readability and maintainability.
But that's one of the paradoxes. Saving a couple of lines reduces eye clutter. What's obscure to you may be obvious to an expert in that language. Shorter is usually better.
What makes Perl difficult to read is the same thing that brought Perl to prominence, the regular expressions. People went nuts for regular expressions, and overused them. The Camel book warns readers about that. People are used to skimming through code quickly, because so much of it really is boilerplate. But you can't quickly skim regular expressions except the trivial ones. You have to study each symbol. Miss one backslash, and the entire meaning changes. I think the other big complaint about Perl is that the language overuses sigils. Having a $ in front of every scalar variable name is tiresome for both coder and maintainer. Adds visual clutter. Smacks very much of putting the compiler writer's convenience ahead of the application programmer, a sin committed in many languages. Why couldn't they use plain names? C did that, it's not hard, just need to reserve a few words, for example, don't allow a variable to be named "if".
What's that saying that's used to justify spying on everyone? "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear".
You can't divorce security from ethics, because so much of security does not make everyone safer, it often makes a small group safer from the public, and that may not be in the public interest. Security against viruses is good for everyone but the few who want to use viruses to the detriment of the infected. Security against "pirates" is much more controversial, as "pirates" too often means everyone else. MS tried propaganda and strong arm tactics to pass off Windows Genuine Advantage as security for users. That was an insult to our intelligence, and a lie. Worse were Sony's music CDs with the root kit. I wonder if any of the leaked info has details about that, perhaps puts names to the people who decided make Sony's own CDs help spread viruses, including their own? With tax season around the corner, and Turbo Tax in the news again for anti-social behavior, the stunt they pulled a decade ago is worth mentioning again. Their "security" measures in their software screwed with the boot sector of their users' hard drives, risking the loss of all their users' data, in order to "protect" their software from piracy with, once again, DRM that does not work.
If you're a security expert, what do you do when you're asked to help cover something up, something that may be criminal and/or dangerous? Or, you're asked to use your knowledge to help make everyone less secure, by, for example, designing a root kit for music CDs? Blow the whistle, or follow orders? Whichever way you go could be trouble. Lose your career because no one wants to hire a whistleblower, and the government does a bad job of protecting whistleblowers, or lose your freedom when you are implicated in the cover up and sent to prison for it? Maybe you can blow the whistle without blowing your cover. No one was sure who Deep Throat was until long after Watergate. For the example of the root kit on the music CDs, you might make a judgment call. You would understand that this is a variation of DRM that will still be ineffective, the root kit is a clumsy idea, and therefore is unlikely to do much damage to the public. The outcome can only be what actually did happen, which is that the root kit was soon noticed and the only harm of significance was self inflicted harm when Sony lost much trust and was forced to recall all the infected CDs. So, your best course of action was likely some form of CYA, documents that you warned management that the root kit was a very bad idea, and that you were going ahead with it only under protest. You could still be blamed and fired of course. Maybe management will believe the root kit would have worked if not for your "treachery" in deliberately doing an incompetent job, despite any words anyone else tells them to the contrary.
Not necessarily. There's cheating to factor in. The people may have actually voted otherwise, but some incumbents abuse their power to rig the election. That's what's going on in the US. Bush should never have won the presidency. Currently, the majority of North Carolina's representatives should be Democratics, instead, most are Republicans. Republicans have been engaging in a number of tactics to tilt the vote their way. Gerrymandering is something both sides have done for decades, but in recent years the Republicans have pushed their cheats more. They make sure there aren't enough voting machines in districts that lean democratic, and they manufacture a problem with voter fraud and use that as the excuse to kick people off voter registration lists and pass these photo ID laws. They even try to intimidate voters in democratic districts with big scary warnings that cheating at the polls is a felony for which you could spend 10 years in jail. Anyone who believes that threat is not going to take a chance like that, better not to vote at all. The courts struck that one down, but there are many other tactics. Crosscheck is a big one. Voters have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be allowed to vote. Recently in Texas, a 4th choice was added for voters who want to vote straight party ticket. Used to be R, D, and Libertarian. Now there is ... Green! How did the Green party gain enough strength to do that? Perot's Reform party is not on the ballot, and he's from Texas. Answer: the Greens aren't strong enough, the Republicans put them on the ballot, figuring that would split the Democratic vote.
The worst part is that the Republicans who do this crap have very limited understanding and not much intelligence. They really seem to think it's okay for them to cheat. The end justifies the means, you know. But no one else better cheat, no sir! If they were smarter, they would understand that cheating is destructive. Instead, they behave as if "might is right" and that winning any way you can, even by cheating, is acceptable, and indeed a show of strength. The other guys were too "wimpy" to use the same "aggressive" tactics, so they deserved to lose! They've even convinced themselves that they aren't really cheating. It's how they can sound like such straight shooters even while their pants are on fire. That last is all part of their overall campaign against reality, science, and reason. For me, one of the most telling moments was the night of the 2012 election, when Romney's gang chose to believe slanted polls and propaganda that showed he was going to win, rather than the best, most unbiased polls which showed that he was losing, and then the actual results, in which he lost.
If China were to put a man on the moon, that might be enough. If they also announce that was only the first step to eventually colonizing Mars, for themselves, the rubes would suddenly demand we get there first.