Most car-players nowadays can play music off a USB stick.

For my car, I've ripped the CDs to MP3, and then put them on a 32GB "stub" USB stick: that way, I can play RANDOM( 3000 files ), which is rather more convenient than having to keep swapping physical CDs.

...but copyright violation for commercial gain is not just a civil-suit issue, it is a felony (a crime), and should be prosecuted by the feds.

not just a photograph, but a full history that does constitute "performance art", protected under both USCTitle 17 and the Berne Copyright Treaty.

The copyright-absolutist position is this: My life is *my* performance before God and all mankind. As soon as it is recorded, that recording is a copyright work for which I own the copyright (unless there is a specific written contract to the contrary), according to US Code Title 17. And use of that work without my permission for commercial gain is felony copyright infringement. Felony copyright infringement is exactly the behavior all these data-gatherers are doing. FWIW.

This violates Federal Law, in particular the Magnussen-Moss Act (15 USC 2302(c)) requirement that says warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the warranty.

There is a very easy way to have avoided these problems with medical records:

• Internally, all times are kept in a universal, unambiguous format: GMT is suggested
• It is the responsibility of the input and display programs to convert between internal format and local time.

I instigated this for environmental models two decades ago, and it makes life lots easier. And more error-free.

Of course, there are those DB idiots who won't learn from history, and keep trying to reverse that decision... ;-(

What does Gnome do if my default desktop hsa done a "xrandr --mode 2560x1440 --panning 3200x2048..." ?

(When I'm doing GIS or scientific visualization I need a _lot_ of pixels!)

What does "full screen" even mean in that context?

And the chance that I'll have any kind of consistent interface, when thousands of app-writers are rolling their own? ZERO!

The smart-tv action being described is the production of derivative works for copyrighted works (all those TV shows...) without the permission of the copyright holder and for a profit. This is felony copyright infringement, plain and simple.

As is the insertion of ads into web pages by ISPs, FWIW.

Proper design has safe defaults.

Why doesn't systemd?

Also not a server admin -- but admin for multiple workstations and portables. You've reproduced my experience exactly, except that I'd say "in even the last couple of months" instead of "in the last couple of years." And I've been running and administering Linux systems since the mid-Nineties (i.e., over twenty years).

Frankly, modern Fortran (F-90 or later) is a very well-structured programming language, at a higher level than (more structured than, and safer -- not as subject to buffer-overruns -- than) C: character-strings and multi-dimensional arrays are first class citizens in Fortran. And for what it's worth, I've written more than 15K lines of production Fortran in the last month...

Also Fortran. Needed it for a physics course in 1969.

Even worse: people who think they know everything but in fact know only bad ways of doing things, and who are too arrogant to take correction.

Example: EPA's CMAQ air quality model. The first requirement is that this model support regulatory application: in particular, it must maintain adequate chain of custody of its own data to stand up in court; silent data corruption is completely unacceptable. However, one of the primary developers NEVER checks the status of operations that may fail -- e.g., MPI communications. Thanks to the arrogancew of this developer, there are at least 453 failures to follow this standard. IMNHO, the model is completely untrustworthy.

And as the original systems architect for that model, that makes me VERY unhappy.

...and replace the standard (short) hinge and lock-striker screws with steel screws long enough to anchor through the door-frame into the framing behind it. 3.5-inch stainless steel screws are excellent for this. Combined with a good (steel?) door, no one is going to bash it down easily.