To follow up, I'm actually not sure that we ever sold a PC on a bid that really required the FCC spec, and we never advertised it.
We probably submitted a bid or two, but we weren't winning many bids at the time because we were refusing to sell practically defective components, and we were selling to extremely poor school districts who were buying crap systems because they were $10 cheaper. We had some customers ask about it, the owner got a wild hare about it and we took one system to have it certified.
As I said, we only ever did it with that one unit, as soon as one component was revisioned the spec went out of date, and at the time that happened about every 2 weeks. I'm not sure we ever actually sold any and said they were certified. We did tell people that we had had models in the past that were certified, but it was too expensive to continue and nobody else in the area was doing it either.
Whatever. The company hasn't built PCs for many years now, and the fastest machine they ever made was a 486, so I'd be very surprised if they weren't all in the landfill by now.
The company we hired to do the testing did testing for most of the major manufacturers, and the techs there said that the vast majority of manufacturers they tested did this.
The testing was kind of ridiculous anyway. We were a small shop, the testing cost us $15K or so, and NO changes WHATSOEVER were allowed. If the manufacturer of our modem card upped the rev from A to B, we had to retest at another $15K. We actually only ever got one box certified, and we gave up after that. So there are maybe 30 such machines that we ever sold.
The truth is, we were not able to buy off-the-shelf components at the time that could come anywhere near meeting FCC specs for emissions. They all howled like banshees at certain frequencies and harmonics. Taping the hell out of all the joints and improving the sprayed-on conductive shielding was the only way to pass. Doing this to every unit would have driven us out of business, because none of our competition was doing it and we were over their prices anyway (because some of them were engaging in specification inflation that crossed well into the realm of fraud, and we weren't going to play that game - we concentrated on building reliable systems).
We did do the best we could; we bought the quietest (in the RF sense) case that we could find that was in our price range, even though it was a little ugly and harder to work with than the others. And we did tell anyone who asked, including our major customers, the realities that we had discovered behind the testing. They 100% didn't care; they just had "FCC certification" on their requirements sheets. We told them that if they REALLY wanted their machines to meet FCC spec, we would be able to deliver it, we knew what to do to meet that spec. But if they did require this and they accepted a bid from another local clone builder, we'd help them inspect the delivered machines, and we could pretty much guarantee nobody else around was going to be able to meet the spec. We actually kind of hoped that would happen, because having to retrofit a few hundred machines to meet spec probably would have driven our competition out of business (it was a small town, with small companies).
I can almost guarantee that if you bought a clone PC in the late 80's and early 90's, it didn't even dream about meeting FCC specs, even though most of them said they did. I think several of the major manufacturers actually did meet spec, because they were able to have their own cases made with proper shielding, but at the time every clone case we bought to test was horrendous in this regard.
Heck, the TRS-80 claimed to meet FCC specs, but it emitted an insane amount of radiation, many times what a modern PC does even with its lid off.
I find that when properly applied, procrastination results in increased efficiency. By delaying my work significantly (but not to the point where I'll have to reduce my delivered quality) I find that I do not wind up coding stuff against docs and specs that will be changed.
I learned this in college. We'd bust our butts trying to code something early, and the next class the prof would alter the spec because the problem contained unexpected (by him) challenges that he had not intended. If you waited a bit, the prof would code up his solution as an answer key to diff ours against, and he'd hit the challenges and recast the problem.
So by putting off stuff to some extent, I wind up not coding stuff that I'll just wind up throwing out anyway.
Week 1 with the ReplayTV: "I hate this complicated thing. I just want to watch my shows. Why do I have to go to Video mode on the TV?"
Once I hooked up the DVR box, the TV only leaves video mode to watch DVDs, and that's only because I'm too lazy to get DVD playing working right under GBPVR.
I installed GBPVR, hooked everything up, handed the remote to the kids, and they were off with zero questions. They'd be very disappointed to lose it now. They both enjoy running mini-marathons of their favorite shows occasionally.
For me it's not pausing and rewinding, it's timeshifting shows.
If I have to find something to watch when I feel like sitting down at the TV, almost every time I'll flip around a bit and give up.
With the DVR there's always something on that I want to watch, something from the History Channel that recorded at 3AM last weekend, or a Mythbusters from last night, or a show that's currently recording and started 15 minutes ago.
If I had to give up my DVR at this point, I'd probably just drop my cable subscription and watch stuff downloaded from usenet.
I used to be a partner in a company that built clone machines. We decided to get our machine FCC certified. We contracted a testing house to do the measurements for us.
Our machine failed pretty miserably.
They had a bunch of copper mesh tape and grounding wires and all sorts of such things. We were able to modify the machine in order to meet the tests. According to the tech we were working with, this is almost universal, or was 15 years ago when I was there. Companies actually modified a single unit of each model in order to meet the tests, and they just kept it around in case further testing was required.
As a result, I wouldn't trust ANY tests that were done on a unit that was provided by the manufacturer for the purposes of testing. You can be sure that it's gotten a thorough going-over beforehand that a production unit wouldn't. And that "2 out of 5" I'm sure means that 2 out of 5 of the specially manicured units will pass, not 2 out of 5 production boxes.
Looking at the spec, it actually says that the test consists of 26 drops that may be divided among 5 test units any way the manufacturer likes, and that the average unit should be expected to be dropped 4 to 6 times in its lifetime.
I think the original 26 drops per unit spec was due to a misunderstanding of the spec; 4 to 6 is more accurate.
I would give them credit that they appear to have removed the 26 drop claim from their website, which I think was inaccurate to start with. It now just says that it meets the required spec.
The percentage would probably be even less if you discounted those who have VCRs on their equipment shelf just because they're too lazy to remove them. I have one on my rack, and the only reason I've put a tape in it for the last couple of years was to convert some VHS tapes to DVD for a friend. If there are still tapes around the house, they're in a box in the basement just waiting to be thrown out.
The last possible reason for using it went away when I put the DVR box in place. I'm happy not to be screwing around with worrying about bad quality tapes anymore.
Once I got all the episodes of MST3K downloaded and onto DVD, why would I need my VCR anymore?
Ever hear of rounding? Tax is currently rounded to the nearest penny. If it's rounded to the nearest nickel, dime, or even dollar, it's still a wash in the long run unless for some reason you purchase things often that result in rounding up more than rounding down.
When I get pennies in change, I check for pre-1982 (copper) pennies to use in coin-smashing machines, and throw the rest into the next give-a-penny bin I see, and I take from there as well. So for all intents, I've already gone to the "no pennies" economy. I give up pennies given in change, and I take a few when available as well. I probably come out a bit behind on the deal in the long run but I don't really care.
since I don't even carry a battery in my laptop. After a couple of years I realized that I never use it when I'm not near an outlet anyway, so I just took it out and left it in the bag. I suppose it could burst into flames there...
Since when are citizens required to carry ID? Not that I know of. I don't carry it unless I'm driving a car, which is not many days lately. Of course, the private business is free to ask for whatever they want as a condition of entry. They wouldn't get my business though.
Heidi Hammel has been on a TON of TV space documentaries. She does a lot of science and a lot of outreach. I'd sure vote for putting her in consideration at least. I don't know about top 10, because there ARE a lot to choose from http://heritage.stsci.edu/1999/29/bio/bio_hammel.h tml Inexplicably, there's no page for Dr Hammel, but she is mini-bio'd in this article about a minor planet named for her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3530_Hammel
Caroline was William Herschel's sister. She actually did a TON of the gruntwork for Herschel's massive life's work, and saw essentially no reward for it. There are a LOT of women in past centuries that did brilliant work in obscurity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Herschel
I don't think the people doing this list did ANY research at all.
Yes, you can buy an FM tuner that uses the iPod as a battery and control panel. It costs more than most standalone FM radios and doesn't sound any better, and the two together are bigger than a standalone, as well.
It is pretty tiny compared to a standalone with battery and display, but it's kind of silly since I have a $20 MP3 players with FM radios in them that are very tiny, smaller volume than the nano (a Sandisk 512M). Seems like Apple would have put the FM tuner in by now. I see so many people saying they bought something other than an iPod so they could have a radio too.
You'd think Apple would know, if anyone, that people don't like a bunch of addons and extra cables.
Right, I don't think you can get a laptop with a drive that small anymore.
On another note, what kind of *MORONIC* company allows sensitive customer data on portable media in unencrypted form? I mean hell, it's not like there haven't been plenty of cautionary tales, and it's not like it even costs any damn money, just run truecrypt if you're too cheap to buy anything, it works well.
I'm guessing that they think that the possibility that somebody might forget a password is more important than actually safeguarding customer data. I mean, you have to ASSUME that anything on a laptop WILL be stolen; laptops get stolen ALL THE TIME. Our company loses several a year to theft from travellers.
We use pencils on the mark/sense ballots where I vote, and we always have. I once accidentally filled in the wrong spot on a paper ballot. I erased the bejeezus out of that thing, I couldn't tell there was a mark there anymore, but the machine counted it as a spoiled ballot. If the machine is good, using pencil is OK.
I guess pens in general are OK, especially since the marks only have to last a few dozen months. But in general pencil is much more long-term durable than most inks, except possibly pigment inks. But I don't think anyone's holding the ballots for 1000 years.
Accounting Troll: Here's our random number generator. Random number Troll: Nine...Nine...Nine...Nine...Nine... Dilbert: Are you sure that's random? Accounting Troll: That's the trouble with random numbers; you can never really be sure.
Heck, I bought a brand new machine that was a Celeron 400 with 64M RAM, and it came from the factory with XP Pro installed. I bumped the memory up to 256M, and it was fine. This was about 4-5 years ago IIRC. I don't remember thinking it was slow at the time, and honestly I think I'd be pretty happy with it now. It bit the dust and I bought a new machine, but I didn't replace it because it was slow.
I have a DSLR. I love it. But you know what? I bought a new point-n-shoot camera as well, and I use it most of the time. I use the DSLR when I am going somewhere specifically to take pictures, or I know I'm going to need a high degree of flexibility, or rapid-fire shooting, or something like that.
I used to own point-n-shoots that were way too simple and I couldn't stand them. I have a Canon A series now and it has manual, shutter/aperture priority, and a range of features. Yes, I use them. I bought previous cameras when I couldn't get any better, then eventually sold them when models with those features came along.
Bottom line, if I could get an SLR that I could drop into my pocket, I'd use it all the time. But I feel that it's important for someone who loves photography to have a camera with them at ALL TIMES. You can't take pictures without a camera, and you never know when an opportunity will happen.
If you read the photography forums, you'll find that even the most serious, Nikon F-body toting, $10K lens buying pro almost always has a point-n-shoot in his pocket and car. I think if you're going to have one camera, it probably should be one of the more powerful but compact point-n-shoots (mine is an A710). Because while it can't really match the flexibility or quality of output of an SLR, it does have one advantage that the SLR will never be able to match; you'll be able to have it with you when the great photo ops occur.
I suggest you look up the definition of "assault". You are guity of assault if you threaten physical harm to another. In the US and I think in a lot of other places.
If you follow through on physical harm, then you are also guilty of "battery".
Yes, car analogies are simultaneously horrible and pretty good.
I don't think rebuilding a tranny is that much different than learning to live with Linux. You can take classes for both. I think it's actually pretty likely that rebuilding trannies would take LESS time than learning to be proficient with Linux. If you started with someone who was, say, capable of changing oil and tires, and installing a program and dinking with regedit without hurting themselves, I think they could probably learn to be a pretty decent auto mechanic in a half a year of night classes. Not great, but able to fix a lot of stuff, and follow instructions enough to do an engine rebuild. I'm not sure you could learn to be a proficient Linux guru in the same amount of time. Maybe. But they're probably not much different.
It's interesting that you argue about the "mechanic's touch". You realize that the same thing applies to computers, right? Just as there are people who probably would NEVER be able to learn to work on a car, there are people who will never be able to learn to work on a computer. As I said in my original post, I don't believe that these people are incapable, but THEY believe that they are incapable.
I happen to be proficient in both working on cars and working on electronics and computers and programming and most anything else I've tried (which isn't 1% of what I have yet to try). I don't believe that I'm particularly brilliant, I just believe that if anyone else can do it, then I can do it too. It's REALLY frustrating to me to have people just go glassy-eyed and smile and say "Oh, I could never do that." People mentally pithing themselves is just pathetic, but it's reality. I don't know where it comes from but I bet somewhere in their childhood, someone told them they couldn't do something. Nobody ever told me that.
Also, apart from really heavy stuff (> 100 pounds, maybe if I needed a new engine or something) I've never needed a part that I couldn't carry on my bike or the bike trailer. It's about 5 miles to the dealership from my house. There are two auto parts places on my 10 mile bike commute, and it's mostly rural. People who live in cities probably have less distance.
You know, maybe people don't WANT to become OS experts. Obviously they don't HAVE to. If you enjoy screwing with an OS, knock yourself out. But the vast majority of people want an appliance that runs apps without having to do anything more than shove the disc in and click "install".
Are they lazy and ignorant? OK, I guess it's hard to argue that they're not ignorant.
Are people who don't want to rebuild the transmission on their car just lazy and ignorant? They could do it. Most people could do it, if they took the time to learn how. I believe that most people can do anything that they really want to do. But that doesn't mean they're lazy and ignorant if they don't want to do something that I happen to think is fun.
I've been using Linux for a lot of years; I started with pre-1.0 slackware downloaded over a 14.4kbps modem onto floppies.
I guess that makes me experienced, but I honestly just want an OS that works. I probably COULD configure Linux to do all my desktop activities, but I continue to use it only as a server OS. The reason is that I don't WANT to be an OS expert, any more than most people want to be a mechanic in order to drive a car.
I've gotten way past the point in my life where I want to waste time screwing with my computer just for its own sake. I want my computer time spent getting things done, even if it's just reading email or watching cartoons. I would like to be running Linux instead of Windows, but I'm not willing to spend an extra 4 hours every time I want to get a new app running. I want the computer to run apps that I want it to run, and if that means running Windows, then I'll live with it.
I'm very happy to see some of the new distros. I particularly like Ubuntu; it's come the closest to install and go as any I've tried lately, but even so it doesn't really put me in the non-windows business.
Slashdot Mirror
To follow up, I'm actually not sure that we ever sold a PC on a bid that really required the FCC spec, and we never advertised it.
We probably submitted a bid or two, but we weren't winning many bids at the time because we were refusing to sell practically defective components, and we were selling to extremely poor school districts who were buying crap systems because they were $10 cheaper.
We had some customers ask about it, the owner got a wild hare about it and we took one system to have it certified.
As I said, we only ever did it with that one unit, as soon as one component was revisioned the spec went out of date, and at the time that happened about every 2 weeks. I'm not sure we ever actually sold any and said they were certified. We did tell people that we had had models in the past that were certified, but it was too expensive to continue and nobody else in the area was doing it either.
Whatever. The company hasn't built PCs for many years now, and the fastest machine they ever made was a 486, so I'd be very surprised if they weren't all in the landfill by now.
The company we hired to do the testing did testing for most of the major manufacturers, and the techs there said that the vast majority of manufacturers they tested did this.
The testing was kind of ridiculous anyway. We were a small shop, the testing cost us $15K or so, and NO changes WHATSOEVER were allowed. If the manufacturer of our modem card upped the rev from A to B, we had to retest at another $15K. We actually only ever got one box certified, and we gave up after that. So there are maybe 30 such machines that we ever sold.
The truth is, we were not able to buy off-the-shelf components at the time that could come anywhere near meeting FCC specs for emissions. They all howled like banshees at certain frequencies and harmonics. Taping the hell out of all the joints and improving the sprayed-on conductive shielding was the only way to pass. Doing this to every unit would have driven us out of business, because none of our competition was doing it and we were over their prices anyway (because some of them were engaging in specification inflation that crossed well into the realm of fraud, and we weren't going to play that game - we concentrated on building reliable systems).
We did do the best we could; we bought the quietest (in the RF sense) case that we could find that was in our price range, even though it was a little ugly and harder to work with than the others. And we did tell anyone who asked, including our major customers, the realities that we had discovered behind the testing. They 100% didn't care; they just had "FCC certification" on their requirements sheets. We told them that if they REALLY wanted their machines to meet FCC spec, we would be able to deliver it, we knew what to do to meet that spec. But if they did require this and they accepted a bid from another local clone builder, we'd help them inspect the delivered machines, and we could pretty much guarantee nobody else around was going to be able to meet the spec. We actually kind of hoped that would happen, because having to retrofit a few hundred machines to meet spec probably would have driven our competition out of business (it was a small town, with small companies).
I can almost guarantee that if you bought a clone PC in the late 80's and early 90's, it didn't even dream about meeting FCC specs, even though most of them said they did. I think several of the major manufacturers actually did meet spec, because they were able to have their own cases made with proper shielding, but at the time every clone case we bought to test was horrendous in this regard.
Heck, the TRS-80 claimed to meet FCC specs, but it emitted an insane amount of radiation, many times what a modern PC does even with its lid off.
I find that when properly applied, procrastination results in increased efficiency.
By delaying my work significantly (but not to the point where I'll have to reduce my delivered quality) I find that I do not wind up coding stuff against docs and specs that will be changed.
I learned this in college. We'd bust our butts trying to code something early, and the next class the prof would alter the spec because the problem contained unexpected (by him) challenges that he had not intended. If you waited a bit, the prof would code up his solution as an answer key to diff ours against, and he'd hit the challenges and recast the problem.
So by putting off stuff to some extent, I wind up not coding stuff that I'll just wind up throwing out anyway.
Week 1 with the ReplayTV: "I hate this complicated thing. I just want to watch my shows. Why do I have to go to Video mode on the TV?"
Once I hooked up the DVR box, the TV only leaves video mode to watch DVDs, and that's only because I'm too lazy to get DVD playing working right under GBPVR.
I installed GBPVR, hooked everything up, handed the remote to the kids, and they were off with zero questions. They'd be very disappointed to lose it now. They both enjoy running mini-marathons of their favorite shows occasionally.
For me it's not pausing and rewinding, it's timeshifting shows.
If I have to find something to watch when I feel like sitting down at the TV, almost every time I'll flip around a bit and give up.
With the DVR there's always something on that I want to watch, something from the History Channel that recorded at 3AM last weekend, or a Mythbusters from last night, or a show that's currently recording and started 15 minutes ago.
If I had to give up my DVR at this point, I'd probably just drop my cable subscription and watch stuff downloaded from usenet.
I used to be a partner in a company that built clone machines. We decided to get our machine FCC certified. We contracted a testing house to do the measurements for us.
Our machine failed pretty miserably.
They had a bunch of copper mesh tape and grounding wires and all sorts of such things. We were able to modify the machine in order to meet the tests.
According to the tech we were working with, this is almost universal, or was 15 years ago when I was there. Companies actually modified a single unit of each model in order to meet the tests, and they just kept it around in case further testing was required.
As a result, I wouldn't trust ANY tests that were done on a unit that was provided by the manufacturer for the purposes of testing. You can be sure that it's gotten a thorough going-over beforehand that a production unit wouldn't. And that "2 out of 5" I'm sure means that 2 out of 5 of the specially manicured units will pass, not 2 out of 5 production boxes.
Looking at the spec, it actually says that the test consists of 26 drops that may be divided among 5 test units any way the manufacturer likes, and that the average unit should be expected to be dropped 4 to 6 times in its lifetime.
I think the original 26 drops per unit spec was due to a misunderstanding of the spec; 4 to 6 is more accurate.
I would give them credit that they appear to have removed the 26 drop claim from their website, which I think was inaccurate to start with. It now just says that it meets the required spec.
The percentage would probably be even less if you discounted those who have VCRs on their equipment shelf just because they're too lazy to remove them.
I have one on my rack, and the only reason I've put a tape in it for the last couple of years was to convert some VHS tapes to DVD for a friend. If there are still tapes around the house, they're in a box in the basement just waiting to be thrown out.
The last possible reason for using it went away when I put the DVR box in place. I'm happy not to be screwing around with worrying about bad quality tapes anymore.
Once I got all the episodes of MST3K downloaded and onto DVD, why would I need my VCR anymore?
also, zinc is a bit softer, so it tends to flatten out too much and the smashed pennies have a tail.
Two headed fossil found!!!
Amazingly, right next to this was another amazing find, a similar species with two tails!
Ever hear of rounding? Tax is currently rounded to the nearest penny. If it's rounded to the nearest nickel, dime, or even dollar, it's still a wash in the long run unless for some reason you purchase things often that result in rounding up more than rounding down.
When I get pennies in change, I check for pre-1982 (copper) pennies to use in coin-smashing machines, and throw the rest into the next give-a-penny bin I see, and I take from there as well. So for all intents, I've already gone to the "no pennies" economy. I give up pennies given in change, and I take a few when available as well. I probably come out a bit behind on the deal in the long run but I don't really care.
since I don't even carry a battery in my laptop. After a couple of years I realized that I never use it when I'm not near an outlet anyway, so I just took it out and left it in the bag. I suppose it could burst into flames there...
Since when are citizens required to carry ID? Not that I know of.
I don't carry it unless I'm driving a car, which is not many days lately.
Of course, the private business is free to ask for whatever they want as a condition of entry. They wouldn't get my business though.
TFA is down so I'm just going by comments here.
h tml
Heidi Hammel has been on a TON of TV space documentaries. She does a lot of science and a lot of outreach.
I'd sure vote for putting her in consideration at least. I don't know about top 10, because there ARE a lot to choose from
http://heritage.stsci.edu/1999/29/bio/bio_hammel.
Inexplicably, there's no page for Dr Hammel, but she is mini-bio'd in this article about a minor planet named for her:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3530_Hammel
Caroline was William Herschel's sister. She actually did a TON of the gruntwork for Herschel's massive life's work, and saw essentially no reward for it. There are a LOT of women in past centuries that did brilliant work in obscurity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Herschel
I don't think the people doing this list did ANY research at all.
Yes, you can buy an FM tuner that uses the iPod as a battery and control panel. It costs more than most standalone FM radios and doesn't sound any better, and the two together are bigger than a standalone, as well.
It is pretty tiny compared to a standalone with battery and display, but it's kind of silly since I have a $20 MP3 players with FM radios in them that are very tiny, smaller volume than the nano (a Sandisk 512M). Seems like Apple would have put the FM tuner in by now. I see so many people saying they bought something other than an iPod so they could have a radio too.
You'd think Apple would know, if anyone, that people don't like a bunch of addons and extra cables.
Right, I don't think you can get a laptop with a drive that small anymore.
On another note, what kind of *MORONIC* company allows sensitive customer data on portable media in unencrypted form? I mean hell, it's not like there haven't been plenty of cautionary tales, and it's not like it even costs any damn money, just run truecrypt if you're too cheap to buy anything, it works well.
I'm guessing that they think that the possibility that somebody might forget a password is more important than actually safeguarding customer data. I mean, you have to ASSUME that anything on a laptop WILL be stolen; laptops get stolen ALL THE TIME. Our company loses several a year to theft from travellers.
I don't have any idea how my wife votes. It'd be rude of me to ask, IMHO.
We use pencils on the mark/sense ballots where I vote, and we always have.
I once accidentally filled in the wrong spot on a paper ballot. I erased the bejeezus out of that thing, I couldn't tell there was a mark there anymore, but the machine counted it as a spoiled ballot. If the machine is good, using pencil is OK.
I guess pens in general are OK, especially since the marks only have to last a few dozen months. But in general pencil is much more long-term durable than most inks, except possibly pigment inks. But I don't think anyone's holding the ballots for 1000 years.
(Dilbert tours the accounting department)
Accounting Troll: Here's our random number generator.
Random number Troll: Nine...Nine...Nine...Nine...Nine...
Dilbert: Are you sure that's random?
Accounting Troll: That's the trouble with random numbers; you can never really be sure.
Heck, I bought a brand new machine that was a Celeron 400 with 64M RAM, and it came from the factory with XP Pro installed. I bumped the memory up to 256M, and it was fine. This was about 4-5 years ago IIRC. I don't remember thinking it was slow at the time, and honestly I think I'd be pretty happy with it now. It bit the dust and I bought a new machine, but I didn't replace it because it was slow.
I have a DSLR. I love it. But you know what? I bought a new point-n-shoot camera as well, and I use it most of the time. I use the DSLR when I am going somewhere specifically to take pictures, or I know I'm going to need a high degree of flexibility, or rapid-fire shooting, or something like that.
I used to own point-n-shoots that were way too simple and I couldn't stand them. I have a Canon A series now and it has manual, shutter/aperture priority, and a range of features. Yes, I use them. I bought previous cameras when I couldn't get any better, then eventually sold them when models with those features came along.
Bottom line, if I could get an SLR that I could drop into my pocket, I'd use it all the time. But I feel that it's important for someone who loves photography to have a camera with them at ALL TIMES. You can't take pictures without a camera, and you never know when an opportunity will happen.
If you read the photography forums, you'll find that even the most serious, Nikon F-body toting, $10K lens buying pro almost always has a point-n-shoot in his pocket and car. I think if you're going to have one camera, it probably should be one of the more powerful but compact point-n-shoots (mine is an A710). Because while it can't really match the flexibility or quality of output of an SLR, it does have one advantage that the SLR will never be able to match; you'll be able to have it with you when the great photo ops occur.
I suggest you look up the definition of "assault". You are guity of assault if you threaten physical harm to another. In the US and I think in a lot of other places.
If you follow through on physical harm, then you are also guilty of "battery".
Yes, car analogies are simultaneously horrible and pretty good.
I don't think rebuilding a tranny is that much different than learning to live with Linux. You can take classes for both. I think it's actually pretty likely that rebuilding trannies would take LESS time than learning to be proficient with Linux. If you started with someone who was, say, capable of changing oil and tires, and installing a program and dinking with regedit without hurting themselves, I think they could probably learn to be a pretty decent auto mechanic in a half a year of night classes. Not great, but able to fix a lot of stuff, and follow instructions enough to do an engine rebuild. I'm not sure you could learn to be a proficient Linux guru in the same amount of time. Maybe. But they're probably not much different.
It's interesting that you argue about the "mechanic's touch". You realize that the same thing applies to computers, right? Just as there are people who probably would NEVER be able to learn to work on a car, there are people who will never be able to learn to work on a computer. As I said in my original post, I don't believe that these people are incapable, but THEY believe that they are incapable.
I happen to be proficient in both working on cars and working on electronics and computers and programming and most anything else I've tried (which isn't 1% of what I have yet to try). I don't believe that I'm particularly brilliant, I just believe that if anyone else can do it, then I can do it too. It's REALLY frustrating to me to have people just go glassy-eyed and smile and say "Oh, I could never do that." People mentally pithing themselves is just pathetic, but it's reality. I don't know where it comes from but I bet somewhere in their childhood, someone told them they couldn't do something. Nobody ever told me that.
Also, apart from really heavy stuff (> 100 pounds, maybe if I needed a new engine or something) I've never needed a part that I couldn't carry on my bike or the bike trailer. It's about 5 miles to the dealership from my house. There are two auto parts places on my 10 mile bike commute, and it's mostly rural. People who live in cities probably have less distance.
hmmm, 1080p 72" porn....
You know, maybe people don't WANT to become OS experts. Obviously they don't HAVE to. If you enjoy screwing with an OS, knock yourself out. But the vast majority of people want an appliance that runs apps without having to do anything more than shove the disc in and click "install".
Are they lazy and ignorant? OK, I guess it's hard to argue that they're not ignorant.
Are people who don't want to rebuild the transmission on their car just lazy and ignorant? They could do it. Most people could do it, if they took the time to learn how. I believe that most people can do anything that they really want to do. But that doesn't mean they're lazy and ignorant if they don't want to do something that I happen to think is fun.
I've been using Linux for a lot of years; I started with pre-1.0 slackware downloaded over a 14.4kbps modem onto floppies.
I guess that makes me experienced, but I honestly just want an OS that works. I probably COULD configure Linux to do all my desktop activities, but I continue to use it only as a server OS. The reason is that I don't WANT to be an OS expert, any more than most people want to be a mechanic in order to drive a car.
I've gotten way past the point in my life where I want to waste time screwing with my computer just for its own sake. I want my computer time spent getting things done, even if it's just reading email or watching cartoons. I would like to be running Linux instead of Windows, but I'm not willing to spend an extra 4 hours every time I want to get a new app running. I want the computer to run apps that I want it to run, and if that means running Windows, then I'll live with it.
I'm very happy to see some of the new distros. I particularly like Ubuntu; it's come the closest to install and go as any I've tried lately, but even so it doesn't really put me in the non-windows business.