In the real world, as opposed to whatever fantasy or corner-case scenario you have in mind, a task of significance will involve dealing with people outside a specialist's specialism. I want my brain surgeon to listen to the anaesthetist because the drugs s/he is using may affect the bloodflow in the brain, for example. I also want my brain surgeon to listen to me because there might something in my family history which makes my brain unusual and isn't picked up on an MRI scan.

Primadonnas are a pain the rear when people want to do something of significance.

This article is ignorant and misleading. The "new technology" is nothing to do with Linux, iptables rules are already dynamic, it's the Fedora management tooling that no longer wipes the entire set of rules and loads them afresh.

The truth is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DynamicFirewall

Best slashdot comment I've ever read, thank you!

I know who I am. I am an individual who has experience of the motorbike kill switch scenario you describe. OK don't cite me but you can count me.

How is a child going to throw a kill switch placed under the dash to the door-side of the driver, like where the bonnet/hood release lever is normally positioned?

If your child is unruly enough to reach there while you're driving, and you are incompetent to prevent them, you already have a serious safety issue.

You can cite me. A kill switch can easily be designed and positioned so that it's difficult to accidentally throw, and easy to spot that it has been thrown.

The real argument against a kill switch is a marketing one, if a manufacturer's safety people wanted to introduce them then the marketing people would complain that it would give the impression something was wrong with their cars that they required one. Obviously a poor argument from a safety perspective and a good one from a marketing perspective! Maybe regulation has it's place here, i.e. make them mandatory.

But no wonder, most people only use photocopiers once every few weeks, if that. Yet their interfaces are quite arcane if you want to do anything beyond copying your documents at whatever their current settings are. Worst are the multifunction devices, people stand staring at them for a minute or two just working out what state they are in.

At the office where I'm working there is a regular episode where a lady who knows how the fax machine works talks developers and other skilled techies through sending their timesheets to payroll. It's amusing as she has to go quite slowly for these people who work with and create quite sophisticated software systems!

No, in both cases the experience is the product. Get with it.

So you were looking to profit (in karma) from a USED blog post! You are as bad as those you rail against!

Don't be so hasty. Software is something that can be made for love of the art. Cars require significant capital investment in fabrication equipment and materials, capital most people do not have.

While not denying they can make good money, many in the caring professions do count the benefit they bring to others as a significant factor in their motivations, and I would indeed prefer it if my doctor had my best interest in mind rather than getting through his "caseload". I don't see why you put forward examples about making one's own tools or medicines by way of ridicule as this was not the GP's thrust. Free Software developers are well known for sharing code which implies using others, they call it "libraries", fucknuts, and the idea is to avoid as much DIY as possible.

In my experience this "legal requirement" doesn't get much attention beyond lip service at induction time. In fact I've never heard the 30 minutes for two hours rule. I have experience of ten large companies in the UK, mostly in finance. Half hour lunches and no breaks is the norm, and in my experience there is of course some slacking off and getting a coffee but it's nowhere near the amount suggested by the OP or the replies here. Oh wait, I'm in infrastructure not development! Lazy shits.

In the UK we have a scheme called Faster Payments, one of the four or five decent things our Labour government has done, to which most major banks now subscribe.

link

To quote: It has enabled, for the very first time, phone, internet and standing order payments to move within a few hours - almost at the touch of a button.

It is the equivalent of saying "commercials can't be prettier than the program's average prettiness".

Technically, it's the equivalent of saying "commericals can't be of higher brightness than the program's average brightness". Prettiness is a subjective measure, whereas the amount of sound or light energy is objective.

Not that I agree with such regulations. I get commercial TV for "free" so I can't complain and I don't watch much of it anyway. Their noisy adverts have driven me away from most of the programs I might once have watched.

The only influence TV adverts have on me that I'm aware of is in choice of supermarket. I'm definitely a supermarket snob. But when I do watch commercial TV I see no adverts for any of the products I ever buy.

I implemented a DRBD/heartbeat mail cluster for a client about six years ago. At the same time I implemented a half-baked user replication solution using Unison when we should have been using LDAP. I picked up DRBD and heartbeat easily under pressure and found the config logical and consistent once I understood the underlying concepts. Certainly not bloated. Unison on the other hand caused major headaches. So quite clearly, like LSD, DRBD affects different users in different ways and perhaps you should stick to the crack you're smoking.

You're right, the human race should really stop trying new stuff out.