I would hope if I ever need a pacemaker, that it would have an IP address. I want my doctor to download all the information in the pacemaker every day, and do some analysis on it. Or at least if there is any hint of future trouble I want my doctor notified quickly. If there needs to be an adjustment, then the doctor should make it remotely when possible.
Note however that this needs to be an excellent ip implimentation. It needs to keep the primary function working no matter what. It must not be a problem if someone tries to DOS my pacemaker. There must be NO remote security holes. (OpenBSD has done a good job there, but even they are not good enough, after all this is my life at risk!)
At one time they were paid for the pick up. This used greese, while useless to them does have value. Fitler it good, get rid of the broken down oils, and it would be worth what they paid for it. However it is broken down and no longer cooks correctly. However those who don't need it as pure enjoy the lower price.
At one time restaruants were paid, but with the rise of fast food there is now a glut in the used greese market, and they pay to get rid of it.
You hit on the disadvantage: a 20+ year payback time. Eventough on a modern well insulated house you can do all your heating and cooling for an entire year for about $50, it takes a long time to make up the cost of installing it. Of course a modern furnance in a modern house is very good too. Those old houses that other posters were raving about cost ~$300/month to heat in winter where I live, while a modern house is about $30/month. Geothermo in an old house might make more sense in payback terms, but insulation is still a lot cheaper.
Take some photos of the US, your house, your yard, all the things you have, along with neighbors. People live a different life in Europe, and you won't be able to live the standard American life even if you want to. (there are good and bad points on both sides) You might however be able to find some advanatges to life over here that you can introduce to them. For the most part though take pictures. When I was in europe they were shocked to learn I just bought a house on one acre of land, and didn't consider that much at all, I wished I had pictures to show them how I lived.
Don't forget pictures of people. You won't get to see your nephew much anymore, so you have to live with pictures and letters. Remember professionals can often get better pictures of famious objects than you can, so make your pictures personal in nature. "This was my house in the US" is intereting. "This is the biggest building in my state, but I've never been in it" is not intereting. (IF you worked there it would be)
Sell as much as you can, ship the rest. You might love that table you have in the dining room, but if it is too big to fit in your UK apartment what good is shipping it? (I don't know the UK, so this is just an example). Give things away too. You can buy the basic needs of life anywhere.
The rule should be setimental value first, and avoid shipping the rest.
I hate to say this, but please make sure you are serious about the relationship. You would hate to get there, break up after a few weeks, and discover everything about the UK no annoys you because it reminds you of the failed relationship. (If you are even allowed to stay) This is personal, any only you can be sure.
War is population control
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 2
War is useful for population control. If you have more people then can live the lifestyle they want on the land you have, then war is a good way to randomlly get rid of a few.
Note the the above needs to be vague. If everyone wants to live like I want to live (1000 acres of land all for me, with a private 300 acre lake, within 2 miles of a modern super market), that is very different from people living another life. (ex small apartment in a skyscrapper near plenty of theator and night life) Resource limits are different for each style. There is a big different between beaf and rice as a main staple of the diet, though you can be healthy with either. When there isn't room for you to live your lifestyle you have to get rid of some people, or change your life style.
Convince some cell phone company to do tests of the 3rd generation cell phones there. I don't know how you would make it worth their while, but 3G cell phone could be a good option for many people if it ever takes off. (for that matter if they ever agree on a standard...)
OKay, a very small amount of packet loss can be normal and should be ignored. However if you have anything other than a tiny amount of packet loss your network is in trouble, and in serious need of upgrades. Remember packet loss starts to casscade, because the droped packets have to traverse the network two or more times, and each time it crosses the network it uses some bandwidth. One droped packet, but when it is re-transmitted some other packet is droped and re-transmitted, and as a result your network gets really slow. In theory tcp will just slow down, but users will re-start the slow jobs trying to get a fast connection.
Sure, TCP will get through even when you have 85% packet loss, (I had a customer who had 85% packet loss once, a babybell I won't name) but your applications will often start timing out in other areas. In theory things should still operate, but they just get slow, but many programs have their own timeout outside of tcp so they can detect when the connection when down.
Don't use tcp where you don't need it though. I once had to debug a heartbeat for a failover system, where the system only provided tcp packets. When there was a failure in the network we could switch the network easially enough, but then we had a lot of code to try to figgure out if the heartbeat that just arrived after the network switch was old (and contained invalid information about the failed node), or correct. It always seemed to work, but I didn't sleep well many nights knowing that a customer could lose a critical computer because of code that I was supposed to make work.
So in theory you can say TCP is better when there is expected to be packet loss, and UDP is better when lost packets should be ignored. In parctice though, if you have significant packet loss you need to upgrade the network.
Hmm, so that just means I have to sneak in there my email address. Normally opt-out just puts on on the verified list, but this way I can opt out, and for a change I really am opted out!
Too bad it won't work that way. As the other guy said, the spammer is using an open relay, so they won't see the bounces.
It isn't for everyone, but Lindsay sells several books on how to convert or build alternative fuel cars. From my last catalog (not everyone is online, so get the dead tree catalog - every geek should have it anyway) I recall books on cars that run on Steam, Wood, Hydrogen, and Elctric. Some of the designs are more dangerious than you want to use, and some are obsolete, but they are still a good starting point. Convert your current engine to a new fuel, replace the engine with something else, or build your own horseless carrage.
Expiriment with weird things like the Atkinson cycle engine, tesla turbine, Stirling cycle engine. Make a solar charger with cells you build yourself. Make your own alcohol. Put a windmill on the roof and get free power (good luck overcoming some pesty laws of physics on this one). There is probable something about fuel cells in there too.
I don't know about those numbers, but I know that my power company offers me an option to get all my power from wind generators. However they charge $.12/Kwh for that, vs $.083 (often reduced) for the normal option, which is mostly coal.
What I really want in a computer store is someone who has that special cable/card I need now. Best buy is miles away, and they don't carry the details I want. There is a large markup on cables, and If you will open at 4am I'll pay double again.
Look for industy in town. Every town has (normally several) small buisness in town, some with many computers. They want local support. Many cannot afford, and do not need, a full time system administrator. You are their administrator. Make sure you (or your helper) can run out at any moment to deal with their problems. Printer doesn't work? No problem, I'll run one out, and have it working in minutes. (Make sure you have something in stock that is at least as good, better they replace a 4ppm laser with a 20 ppm color duplex laser than the other way around)
Get everyone to backup. Ideally you will have a secure system to backup to your location. (secure in that you can't get the data, just in case there is an audit). You should be able to charge for this, but consider implimenting it for the smaller customers at no charge, when they need it chrage a lot extra for having a spare copy of their data.
Refer to others, and get their referals back. If Joe sells office supplies tell everyone looking at the one ream of paper you have on the shelf that Joe is cheaper and has a better inventory (and make sure you overcharge to make that true), you carry paper only to give away with new purchses. Only do this if Jow is a fairly nice guy though, you should be careful who you refer buiseness to.
Much as I dislike the man, all evidence suggest Stalin knew (or suspected) all along what Hitler was planning on doing, (after all Stalin was far more evil than Hitler) but pretended to go along with Hitler in the early years because he has more pressing concerns (like he couldn't have held Poland anyway, his army wasn't exactly the best)
What became Nato suspected that the Warsaw pact would become evil, but they also didn't have the resources to be sure to win. Germany had to be defeated (the US could have perhaps stayed out, concentratin on just Japan...), because they were attacking. Russia did not attack directly, so they were not as great a concern even though Stalin was more evil. Of course like you said, but '46 everyone was tired of war, England had a country to rebuild, and most of the rest of Europe was in worse shape.
Of course when playing a board game everything is difference. That million lives lost on paper is just on paper, it doesn't represent a few million crying relatives.
Which brings up an interesting point, which is that aftermarket parts
tend to be poorly manufactured and need to be replaced sooner than the
factory equivalent.
This is a generalization, and like all of them, it is false. OEM parts do tend to be high quality, but that doesn't mean the aftermarket parts are not. Some aftermarket parts are better, some worse.
Many OEM parts are not made by the OEM, they are made by some other company, who slaps the OEM name on the first 1000 parts off the assembly line, and then their name on the rest they make that day. Often one assembly line will make the same part (which may or may not be the same quality) for several different manufactures. Manufatures outsource a lot of this because a company that focuses on just one part can often make that part cheaper and better. Sometimes the buyer will order parts with lower quality, othertimes it is exactly the same. As and example, 80percent of all spark plugs are made by Champion for example, they put whatever name the buyer wants on it.
I have used both OEM and non-OEM parts. When there isn't a cost difference OEM is a good way to be sure. When there is you need to check out quality, if there is a choice on quality or price stores will warn you and give you a choice.
My Mechanic gets $60/hour. I get about half that. now granted the mechanic himself makes less than I do, overhead in the shop makes up the rest. I own my own tools, I work on my own cars. I have rebuilt engines before, and I would do it again (except modern engines normally run longer than the car lasts). I won't mention that I often get parts cheaper than the mechanic charges)
The point is I work on my own cars whenever I can. It might take me twice as long, but I break even at that, and it is a nice change from my day job. I can't justify having a mechanic do most of the work on my car when I can do it.
I cannot justify a $6000 tool though. It doesn't pay when I will only use it every three years. Flash out the code on the dash, and give me a book/database (put it online please!) to look it up in and I will fix the problem. The comptuer already knows, and it already has lights that it can flash. Sure it is less convient than the $6000 computer which displays P01005, where I have to count flashes, but I can count flashes just fine. Just tell me what the code means.
I agree it would have to be big, but I question the need for earth's gravity. While 1g (simulated with the phony cintripital force) might be ideal, I suspect there would be significant benifit from much lower forces..1g would be a lot easier to obtain, and would make sure there are some stresses on the body.
Told me that he just kept different bills in different compartments of his billfold. He asked clerks to seperate them for them, and if things were complex just handed his wallet to the clerk. Clerks don't cheat the blind guy we guess.
Your anology misses something: the admin is the equivelent of the mechanic. I fix my own cars, but if the company owns the car, then I just take it to the company mechanic. there have been times I've felt better qualified to fix the problem than the mechanic, but I let them do it anyway.
Cars today are very reliable. If you discover that not only is your car breaking down all the time, but everyone who takes their car to your mechanic also has a larger than normal amount of breakdowns, wouldn't you find a new mechanic?
This contrasts to a large number of individuals in an organisation who
know the code very well and work with it day in day out.
I have to challange this. Where I work I own a section of code, and I'm the only one who can effectively work with it. There are a few people who know some details of narrowing down where the bugs are, but I'm the only one who can really fix them and have confidence that the fix works. I know about the same amount about the code some of my neighbor's wrote, but for most of my neighbors I know nothing about their code. Because I know my parts I'm slightly better than someone off the street, but not much.
In theory I have access to all the source, I have built all the souce more then once (I own several enumerations that are used by everyone), but that doen'st mean I can open up a random file and fix a bug with any confidence that I didn't introduce more bugs then I fix.
Yeah, your backwords land line phone system is what drives your cell phone market to be better than ours in the US. We have better (it still sucks though) land service in that phone extentions in the bedrooms is normal. However because of that, we don't use cell phones as much. Of course population density is also an issue. (hard to compare apples here, but in the same area Eurpoe has twice as many people)
Have you ever tried to read the NEC? I have, and even though I know about what it is going to say, and (some) of the reasons behind it, I still can't read it and understand it. I can also buy the NEC for about the cost of printing, and I execpt (but likely can't...) that I can find the NEC online if I need it.
Instead of reading the NEC, what anyone wiring a house needs is a seperate book, written by the same people who wrote the NEC that not only has the code, but also explains it in words and format that an electrition can use and understand, vs words that only a lawyer can understand. The same orginization that writes the NEC happens to publish a much more expensive book that explains the NEC in those word.
Thats not what I'm complaining about. Contractors get away with things that homeowners would not.
I know one contractor who sends his wife to all inspections in a very short skirt. Nothing illegal can be proven to happen, but they are well aware that it might help. (someone needs to attend all inspections, and she knows construction and can answer the hard questions correctly)
Now I agree that inspectors do get to know contractors, and will let things that should require a followup inspection go when the honest ones promise to fix it. However some inspectors hate to see home owners do their own work and will look for little details that contractors leave. Other inspectors are good though, and as a home owner I like it when the good one points out things I need to correct. I hate is when the bad ones pick up details that do not matter, and are legal and require a change just because I'm not a professional. i've run into both types.
the interstate system is nice for getting place to place, but some of the best places are well off the beaten path. I recomend a compass. Everytime you come to an intersection flip a coin to decide which way to go, but narrow out all directions that are obviously the wrong way. Oh, and beware of roads marked "Minimum maintance road, proceede at your own risk" they are not kidding, those roads go from nice gravel to quicksand in negative distance (that is you are diving just fine and suddenly you have been in quicksand for 100 feet.) nice roads to drive, but only if you have serious 4 wheel drive equipment (if you do, ignore my advice, try to drive nothing but minimum maintance roads)
Everytime you see a sign "Historical marker ahead", stop, read the marker. Often they are cheesey, but just often enough they are worth reading that you should read them all. If nothing else it gives you insite into the thinking 100 years ago, and it often isn't pretty.
Pick up hitch hikers! Of course this is a room in the car thing, there are obvious safely issues. In general you can meet some interesting people (sometimes truely people you want to meet, and some as the chinese curse, but either way you learn something) by picking up hitch hikers and giving them a free ride. If you can afford it buy them lunch, maybe pay for their admission to some attraction you want to go to. (depending on what money they have). Be a good human being. Help your fellow man.
Stop for parks. There are many state, county, and city parks that are worth visiting. Many have tour guides for free that can give you an excellent education on the area. (the free guides tend to be the best in my expirence)
Eat at local cafes as much as possible. Avoid national chains. (not entirely, just in general) Tex-Mex is best in Texas. Walleye is a minnesota favorite, but I haven't seen it elsewhere. Good chinese good is only aviable in the chinse section of town. (NY and San Francisco) You can't try them all, but try what you can.
Remember, the car is a means to get from place to place, but not a way to get a feel for the country. Stop often and chat with the natives. If you do this right you will randomly come across some small town (population less than 200) with some sort of (spud fest or some such) festival. Stop for the day, see what crazy things people do for a party. Dance with the potatoe queen, wrestle in the greese pit, or whatever they do. (depending on your interests and abilities of course - but don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself)
thats their problem. If they don't want to reveal internal design (ie what the data structure look like) then they should have designed a save file protocol and stuck to that instead.
My dog learned a similear trick at just 10 weeks. I had the latch secured, but he discovered that if he jumped from one spot he could get out. My fence is too high to jump, but it only covers 3 sides of the kenel, the rest is bounded by deck. He can't get out under the deck (I expected that), but he could jump onto the deck and through the railing to get out. Note that the task of getting out the door appears much easier than the task of jumping thought a railing. (but without more details I can't say for sure that that is the case)
So I would contend that this robot at 3 months is not nearly as smart as my dog at 3 months.
Thats not what I said though. A vote won't get you out of a ticket, and it won't get you out of dealing with bad inspectors, but a vote will change the limit to something reasonable (which is why I'll drive home at 70 tonight, not 55). Votes change the future, not today.
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I would hope if I ever need a pacemaker, that it would have an IP address. I want my doctor to download all the information in the pacemaker every day, and do some analysis on it. Or at least if there is any hint of future trouble I want my doctor notified quickly. If there needs to be an adjustment, then the doctor should make it remotely when possible.
Note however that this needs to be an excellent ip implimentation. It needs to keep the primary function working no matter what. It must not be a problem if someone tries to DOS my pacemaker. There must be NO remote security holes. (OpenBSD has done a good job there, but even they are not good enough, after all this is my life at risk!)
At one time they were paid for the pick up. This used greese, while useless to them does have value. Fitler it good, get rid of the broken down oils, and it would be worth what they paid for it. However it is broken down and no longer cooks correctly. However those who don't need it as pure enjoy the lower price.
At one time restaruants were paid, but with the rise of fast food there is now a glut in the used greese market, and they pay to get rid of it.
You hit on the disadvantage: a 20+ year payback time. Eventough on a modern well insulated house you can do all your heating and cooling for an entire year for about $50, it takes a long time to make up the cost of installing it. Of course a modern furnance in a modern house is very good too. Those old houses that other posters were raving about cost ~$300/month to heat in winter where I live, while a modern house is about $30/month. Geothermo in an old house might make more sense in payback terms, but insulation is still a lot cheaper.
Take some photos of the US, your house, your yard, all the things you have, along with neighbors. People live a different life in Europe, and you won't be able to live the standard American life even if you want to. (there are good and bad points on both sides) You might however be able to find some advanatges to life over here that you can introduce to them. For the most part though take pictures. When I was in europe they were shocked to learn I just bought a house on one acre of land, and didn't consider that much at all, I wished I had pictures to show them how I lived.
Don't forget pictures of people. You won't get to see your nephew much anymore, so you have to live with pictures and letters. Remember professionals can often get better pictures of famious objects than you can, so make your pictures personal in nature. "This was my house in the US" is intereting. "This is the biggest building in my state, but I've never been in it" is not intereting. (IF you worked there it would be)
Sell as much as you can, ship the rest. You might love that table you have in the dining room, but if it is too big to fit in your UK apartment what good is shipping it? (I don't know the UK, so this is just an example). Give things away too. You can buy the basic needs of life anywhere.
The rule should be setimental value first, and avoid shipping the rest.
I hate to say this, but please make sure you are serious about the relationship. You would hate to get there, break up after a few weeks, and discover everything about the UK no annoys you because it reminds you of the failed relationship. (If you are even allowed to stay) This is personal, any only you can be sure.
War is useful for population control. If you have more people then can live the lifestyle they want on the land you have, then war is a good way to randomlly get rid of a few.
Note the the above needs to be vague. If everyone wants to live like I want to live (1000 acres of land all for me, with a private 300 acre lake, within 2 miles of a modern super market), that is very different from people living another life. (ex small apartment in a skyscrapper near plenty of theator and night life) Resource limits are different for each style. There is a big different between beaf and rice as a main staple of the diet, though you can be healthy with either. When there isn't room for you to live your lifestyle you have to get rid of some people, or change your life style.
Convince some cell phone company to do tests of the 3rd generation cell phones there. I don't know how you would make it worth their while, but 3G cell phone could be a good option for many people if it ever takes off. (for that matter if they ever agree on a standard...)
OKay, a very small amount of packet loss can be normal and should be ignored. However if you have anything other than a tiny amount of packet loss your network is in trouble, and in serious need of upgrades. Remember packet loss starts to casscade, because the droped packets have to traverse the network two or more times, and each time it crosses the network it uses some bandwidth. One droped packet, but when it is re-transmitted some other packet is droped and re-transmitted, and as a result your network gets really slow. In theory tcp will just slow down, but users will re-start the slow jobs trying to get a fast connection.
Sure, TCP will get through even when you have 85% packet loss, (I had a customer who had 85% packet loss once, a babybell I won't name) but your applications will often start timing out in other areas. In theory things should still operate, but they just get slow, but many programs have their own timeout outside of tcp so they can detect when the connection when down.
Don't use tcp where you don't need it though. I once had to debug a heartbeat for a failover system, where the system only provided tcp packets. When there was a failure in the network we could switch the network easially enough, but then we had a lot of code to try to figgure out if the heartbeat that just arrived after the network switch was old (and contained invalid information about the failed node), or correct. It always seemed to work, but I didn't sleep well many nights knowing that a customer could lose a critical computer because of code that I was supposed to make work.
So in theory you can say TCP is better when there is expected to be packet loss, and UDP is better when lost packets should be ignored. In parctice though, if you have significant packet loss you need to upgrade the network.
Hmm, so that just means I have to sneak in there my email address. Normally opt-out just puts on on the verified list, but this way I can opt out, and for a change I really am opted out!
Too bad it won't work that way. As the other guy said, the spammer is using an open relay, so they won't see the bounces.
It isn't for everyone, but Lindsay sells several books on how to convert or build alternative fuel cars. From my last catalog (not everyone is online, so get the dead tree catalog - every geek should have it anyway) I recall books on cars that run on Steam, Wood, Hydrogen, and Elctric. Some of the designs are more dangerious than you want to use, and some are obsolete, but they are still a good starting point. Convert your current engine to a new fuel, replace the engine with something else, or build your own horseless carrage.
Expiriment with weird things like the Atkinson cycle engine, tesla turbine, Stirling cycle engine. Make a solar charger with cells you build yourself. Make your own alcohol. Put a windmill on the roof and get free power (good luck overcoming some pesty laws of physics on this one). There is probable something about fuel cells in there too.
I don't know about those numbers, but I know that my power company offers me an option to get all my power from wind generators. However they charge $.12/Kwh for that, vs $.083 (often reduced) for the normal option, which is mostly coal.
What I really want in a computer store is someone who has that special cable/card I need now. Best buy is miles away, and they don't carry the details I want. There is a large markup on cables, and If you will open at 4am I'll pay double again.
Look for industy in town. Every town has (normally several) small buisness in town, some with many computers. They want local support. Many cannot afford, and do not need, a full time system administrator. You are their administrator. Make sure you (or your helper) can run out at any moment to deal with their problems. Printer doesn't work? No problem, I'll run one out, and have it working in minutes. (Make sure you have something in stock that is at least as good, better they replace a 4ppm laser with a 20 ppm color duplex laser than the other way around)
Get everyone to backup. Ideally you will have a secure system to backup to your location. (secure in that you can't get the data, just in case there is an audit). You should be able to charge for this, but consider implimenting it for the smaller customers at no charge, when they need it chrage a lot extra for having a spare copy of their data.
Refer to others, and get their referals back. If Joe sells office supplies tell everyone looking at the one ream of paper you have on the shelf that Joe is cheaper and has a better inventory (and make sure you overcharge to make that true), you carry paper only to give away with new purchses. Only do this if Jow is a fairly nice guy though, you should be careful who you refer buiseness to.
Much as I dislike the man, all evidence suggest Stalin knew (or suspected) all along what Hitler was planning on doing, (after all Stalin was far more evil than Hitler) but pretended to go along with Hitler in the early years because he has more pressing concerns (like he couldn't have held Poland anyway, his army wasn't exactly the best)
What became Nato suspected that the Warsaw pact would become evil, but they also didn't have the resources to be sure to win. Germany had to be defeated (the US could have perhaps stayed out, concentratin on just Japan...), because they were attacking. Russia did not attack directly, so they were not as great a concern even though Stalin was more evil. Of course like you said, but '46 everyone was tired of war, England had a country to rebuild, and most of the rest of Europe was in worse shape.
Of course when playing a board game everything is difference. That million lives lost on paper is just on paper, it doesn't represent a few million crying relatives.
Which brings up an interesting point, which is that aftermarket parts tend to be poorly manufactured and need to be replaced sooner than the factory equivalent.
This is a generalization, and like all of them, it is false. OEM parts do tend to be high quality, but that doesn't mean the aftermarket parts are not. Some aftermarket parts are better, some worse.
Many OEM parts are not made by the OEM, they are made by some other company, who slaps the OEM name on the first 1000 parts off the assembly line, and then their name on the rest they make that day. Often one assembly line will make the same part (which may or may not be the same quality) for several different manufactures. Manufatures outsource a lot of this because a company that focuses on just one part can often make that part cheaper and better. Sometimes the buyer will order parts with lower quality, othertimes it is exactly the same. As and example, 80percent of all spark plugs are made by Champion for example, they put whatever name the buyer wants on it.
I have used both OEM and non-OEM parts. When there isn't a cost difference OEM is a good way to be sure. When there is you need to check out quality, if there is a choice on quality or price stores will warn you and give you a choice.
My Mechanic gets $60/hour. I get about half that. now granted the mechanic himself makes less than I do, overhead in the shop makes up the rest. I own my own tools, I work on my own cars. I have rebuilt engines before, and I would do it again (except modern engines normally run longer than the car lasts). I won't mention that I often get parts cheaper than the mechanic charges)
The point is I work on my own cars whenever I can. It might take me twice as long, but I break even at that, and it is a nice change from my day job. I can't justify having a mechanic do most of the work on my car when I can do it.
I cannot justify a $6000 tool though. It doesn't pay when I will only use it every three years. Flash out the code on the dash, and give me a book/database (put it online please!) to look it up in and I will fix the problem. The comptuer already knows, and it already has lights that it can flash. Sure it is less convient than the $6000 computer which displays P01005, where I have to count flashes, but I can count flashes just fine. Just tell me what the code means.
I agree it would have to be big, but I question the need for earth's gravity. While 1g (simulated with the phony cintripital force) might be ideal, I suspect there would be significant benifit from much lower forces. .1g would be a lot easier to obtain, and would make sure there are some stresses on the body.
Told me that he just kept different bills in different compartments of his billfold. He asked clerks to seperate them for them, and if things were complex just handed his wallet to the clerk. Clerks don't cheat the blind guy we guess.
Your anology misses something: the admin is the equivelent of the mechanic. I fix my own cars, but if the company owns the car, then I just take it to the company mechanic. there have been times I've felt better qualified to fix the problem than the mechanic, but I let them do it anyway.
Cars today are very reliable. If you discover that not only is your car breaking down all the time, but everyone who takes their car to your mechanic also has a larger than normal amount of breakdowns, wouldn't you find a new mechanic?
This contrasts to a large number of individuals in an organisation who know the code very well and work with it day in day out.
I have to challange this. Where I work I own a section of code, and I'm the only one who can effectively work with it. There are a few people who know some details of narrowing down where the bugs are, but I'm the only one who can really fix them and have confidence that the fix works. I know about the same amount about the code some of my neighbor's wrote, but for most of my neighbors I know nothing about their code. Because I know my parts I'm slightly better than someone off the street, but not much.
In theory I have access to all the source, I have built all the souce more then once (I own several enumerations that are used by everyone), but that doen'st mean I can open up a random file and fix a bug with any confidence that I didn't introduce more bugs then I fix.
Yeah, your backwords land line phone system is what drives your cell phone market to be better than ours in the US. We have better (it still sucks though) land service in that phone extentions in the bedrooms is normal. However because of that, we don't use cell phones as much. Of course population density is also an issue. (hard to compare apples here, but in the same area Eurpoe has twice as many people)
Have you ever tried to read the NEC? I have, and even though I know about what it is going to say, and (some) of the reasons behind it, I still can't read it and understand it. I can also buy the NEC for about the cost of printing, and I execpt (but likely can't...) that I can find the NEC online if I need it.
Instead of reading the NEC, what anyone wiring a house needs is a seperate book, written by the same people who wrote the NEC that not only has the code, but also explains it in words and format that an electrition can use and understand, vs words that only a lawyer can understand. The same orginization that writes the NEC happens to publish a much more expensive book that explains the NEC in those word.
Thats not what I'm complaining about. Contractors get away with things that homeowners would not.
I know one contractor who sends his wife to all inspections in a very short skirt. Nothing illegal can be proven to happen, but they are well aware that it might help. (someone needs to attend all inspections, and she knows construction and can answer the hard questions correctly)
Now I agree that inspectors do get to know contractors, and will let things that should require a followup inspection go when the honest ones promise to fix it. However some inspectors hate to see home owners do their own work and will look for little details that contractors leave. Other inspectors are good though, and as a home owner I like it when the good one points out things I need to correct. I hate is when the bad ones pick up details that do not matter, and are legal and require a change just because I'm not a professional. i've run into both types.
the interstate system is nice for getting place to place, but some of the best places are well off the beaten path. I recomend a compass. Everytime you come to an intersection flip a coin to decide which way to go, but narrow out all directions that are obviously the wrong way. Oh, and beware of roads marked "Minimum maintance road, proceede at your own risk" they are not kidding, those roads go from nice gravel to quicksand in negative distance (that is you are diving just fine and suddenly you have been in quicksand for 100 feet.) nice roads to drive, but only if you have serious 4 wheel drive equipment (if you do, ignore my advice, try to drive nothing but minimum maintance roads)
Everytime you see a sign "Historical marker ahead", stop, read the marker. Often they are cheesey, but just often enough they are worth reading that you should read them all. If nothing else it gives you insite into the thinking 100 years ago, and it often isn't pretty.
Pick up hitch hikers! Of course this is a room in the car thing, there are obvious safely issues. In general you can meet some interesting people (sometimes truely people you want to meet, and some as the chinese curse, but either way you learn something) by picking up hitch hikers and giving them a free ride. If you can afford it buy them lunch, maybe pay for their admission to some attraction you want to go to. (depending on what money they have). Be a good human being. Help your fellow man.
Stop for parks. There are many state, county, and city parks that are worth visiting. Many have tour guides for free that can give you an excellent education on the area. (the free guides tend to be the best in my expirence)
Eat at local cafes as much as possible. Avoid national chains. (not entirely, just in general) Tex-Mex is best in Texas. Walleye is a minnesota favorite, but I haven't seen it elsewhere. Good chinese good is only aviable in the chinse section of town. (NY and San Francisco) You can't try them all, but try what you can.
Remember, the car is a means to get from place to place, but not a way to get a feel for the country. Stop often and chat with the natives. If you do this right you will randomly come across some small town (population less than 200) with some sort of (spud fest or some such) festival. Stop for the day, see what crazy things people do for a party. Dance with the potatoe queen, wrestle in the greese pit, or whatever they do. (depending on your interests and abilities of course - but don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself)
thats their problem. If they don't want to reveal internal design (ie what the data structure look like) then they should have designed a save file protocol and stuck to that instead.
My dog learned a similear trick at just 10 weeks. I had the latch secured, but he discovered that if he jumped from one spot he could get out. My fence is too high to jump, but it only covers 3 sides of the kenel, the rest is bounded by deck. He can't get out under the deck (I expected that), but he could jump onto the deck and through the railing to get out. Note that the task of getting out the door appears much easier than the task of jumping thought a railing. (but without more details I can't say for sure that that is the case)
So I would contend that this robot at 3 months is not nearly as smart as my dog at 3 months.
Thats not what I said though. A vote won't get you out of a ticket, and it won't get you out of dealing with bad inspectors, but a vote will change the limit to something reasonable (which is why I'll drive home at 70 tonight, not 55). Votes change the future, not today.