I mean, seriously, paralyzed people would probably be bad candidates for teaching anyone anyth...

OHHHHH. Those kinds of pupils!

I'm unfamiliar with the "Queen's duck" gambit and the Google search results are woefully unhelpful. Citation, perhaps?

Stupid lack of sarcasm font. Of coursesolar output has an effect.

As in Fallen Angels, where anthropogenic global warming was the only thing preventing the onset of a new global Ice Age.

I was actually going to post something incredibly close to this. The causal link just isn't there, as far as I can tell. It could very well be that the glaciers melt/freeze due to slight shifts in the poles' positions and variations in the Sun's output.

I mean, I'm not the biggest Val Kilmer fan around, but c'mon, that's just downright insulting!

Only 73% have considered quitting? The other 27% are lying to you, probably because they're worried that the survey is being snooped on by the corporate Barracuda firewall.

...but only if it comes with a cool pings-like-the-motion-detectors-in-Aliens handset, as where's the fun in not having that?

I mean, even my Linksys warns me to only update firmware when I've got an Ethernet cable plugged in to it, because you know how wireless upgrades go.

Was there, or was there not, a bowl of petunias found anywhere near the whale's carcass?

Oh, I see your problem: you think I'm claiming that users of your hallowed creation[s] are doing the designing. Perhaps you need reading comprehension classes then.

I'm saying users of your HC's are doing the exploiting, the breaking, the every-day-using. They're the ones who are going to hold it upside down. Under water. Backwards. And then turn it on.

When it breaks, it's not the designer's fault, it's the user's "unorthodox" employment that is at fault.

Unless, that is, you've over-designed it, like the grip safeties in the original article, the inventors of which claim that they have reliability down to 99/100 correct fires. Please go consult your local firearms expert and ask them whether 1/100 rounds is a generally acceptable rate for misfires.

Again: what have you designed? I'd like to never spend money on it again.

You're everything that is wrong with designers of any stripe. Holy arrogance, Batman!

Seriously, were you intentionally being obtuse? I'm claiming that, in aggregate, yes users will end up knowing your system better than you do, at least if it's used often enough. They will find bugs, they will find exploits, you are not omniscient nor perfect. Your system will have flaws and new and interesting idiots will cause it to fail in new and spectacular ways. The best you can do is minimize the potential for catastrophic failures.

In any event, do you have a link to your design portfolio? I'd like to know precisely which designs, engineering projects, computer OSes, software products or consumer goods to avoid.

Thanks.

It's not a "gun", then, though -- it's "spare parts".

...Which means you'll have an over-designed system, prone to breaking in really weird and unpredictable ways. No, the answer is to have a strictly causal system in which known, simple actions result in known, "simple" results. It's impossible to design an idiot-proof system, as we know the world excels in producing Grade A idiots.