With the oldschool dumb RS232 port you did not need this messed up zoo of USB id's, which are pretty superfluous, just a communication protocol of baud, stop bits, parity, flow control/handshake. If you wanted to find out what device you were talking to, once you set the baud rate and such, you could find out by issuing special commands to it, such as the Hayes modem commands, and it could ID itself like that, but the port itself, or the computer, needed no drivers and keeping track of all this stupid USB id bullshit. If they made the USB port backward compatible with RS232, in a ground, rx, tx way of 3.5 mm RS232 adaptors (and in case a device needs hardware handshake instead of xon/xoff or no handshake, you can manually tie the 9 or 25 pin connector handshake lines together so it self handshakes, as some kind of workaround), we could all ignore this other USB bullshit, or even USB drivers at all that every operating system, or OS upgrade, needs a special version of, and instead everyone could be using the RS232 protocol built into the USB chip at 480,000,000 baud, or bps, talking to portable hard drives and what not with ease.
The caveat is of course artificial intelligence development, and physical real world access of such AI through computer ports from very high computing power cpu's, and also such things as easy automation around the world by idiots taking over the world, and this is how you fight back, they disrespect basic decencies of how we abuse the system in the way we breed out of control, or commit crimes to take over jobs, it's kind of a racial or tribal fight between different people, and this is how some people, who respect the system otherwise, fight back "unfairly" on the computing front, making it difficult or impossible to use or understand computers easily. I mean imagine the 3rd world taking away all jobs because they can find easy ways of automation, through super high speed RS232 protocol talking USB ports.
By the way, there is a caveat against absolute democracy, or total lack of nobility, so to speak. The nobility tends to be smart, and able to create lots of high tech wealth, such as computing, even if they are very inbred. In a yeoman farmer society one might be able to grow his own food, but may not have computers, stereo equipment, or cellphones at all, kinda like in the communist Soviet Union, you might be stuck in the past technologically, where people want to, but they can't, make stuff like computers, or electronics. In essence the wealth extracted "unfairly" from the rest of the population through abuses of power and property control is what makes it worth to those people doing it to keep providing high tech weapons for national defense, technology, electronics, etc. In fact I witnessed the closure of a union rubber plant in the US, relocating to Mexico, paying $5/day there instead of the $17.85/hr uniform across the board pay to every union worker here (I was getting a nonunion clerk's pay in the offices), regardless if they were the janitor or reactor operator or warehouse worker, and the whole thing really happened because the union people had their mindsets distorted, there was only 100 of them when there used to be 200, so they assumed the right to overtime was normal, and it ended up where often nothing was done during the 8 hrs of regular work, and any actual work was used as an excuse for overtime, in effect, the whole place was like a clubhouse you show up to chitchat about politics and what not, instead of a regular job. In essence you should work smart, not hard, and you can sit on your ass if you got it figured out - or work your butt off if you're an idiot, any job in the world is easy if you know what you're doing, but you can make it hard if you don't know what you're doing - but then the corporate bean counters constantly complain to cut cost, lay off people, so there was this eternal struggle of making your job easy and putting out the tons and tons of quality product each day without killing yourself with work, but also without getting laid off over making your job too easy. It was like management refused to negotiate the contract properly, and they let the union get away with anything they asked for, just to get them into a distorted mindset and situation where they got anything they asked for, and it was a really awkward situation. Like sleeping on the job was normal, while being paid for it, but you can argue that these 55-60 year old people(who should be 80 yrs old today), having worked there 35+ years, ever since they turned 18, pulling 5 days straight 16 hr days, or 80 hrs in 5 days, practically living at their jobs, dedicating their life to it, unlike the corporate bean counters who got half the income this way too, yet they did not have to live at their jobs for 16 hr days, kind of needed to be able to schedule sleep breaks during those 80 hrs, in order to do their jobs properly. Because their pay was so high, they had a vested interest in making sure the plant made good money, and they made production decisions that a remote or even local management would have no clue about, because they did not spend their whole life living with the equipment and knowing its quirks inside out, like 2nd nature, so when they slept, they did not sleep in a stupid, or uncaring about the company way, but did it for a good reason. Most of the time. Age was of course an issue too, but with age came wisdom of knowing just exactly how to turn a knob, and be sort of an analog computer that controls the process to maximum profitability, something the remote bean counters that don't spend their entire lives living with the machine have no clue about, nor can you just get a guy off the street and assume he'd know how to do it. Of course it was ISO certified, yet it was impossible to write work instructions, because the workers were not stupid to tell what took them 30 years to figure out, and put themselves out of a job that way. There were actually some jobs that only 2 people knew how to do right, and everyone else fucking up on it, such as the process of how to properly transform latex into solid rubber, and if both of them happened to be sick or on vacation, the foremen put that hole process on hold, just kept accumulating the latex for when they came back, instead of letting another guy make either too watery glue or too dry black burnt crap from it, instead of proper solid rubber, some of the stuff was that touchy. So knob-turning jobs were done well by these old timers, but physical labor, such as vessel cleaning, was difficult, also because it was the oldest people volunteering to absorb the carcinogen doses from it into their body (plus they got some silly 25 cents an hour extra pay, as hazard pay, which was the only way to make more than 17.85/hr, and it was usually the guys with the most seniority that bid out and booted the younger ones from such a spot, and the whole seniority structure shake up of people picking new jobs, booting others from their posts who in turn booted others from their posts, trickling down all the way to the youngest guys, happened, but this way almost everybody learned every job they were stuck with, or more like there was a communal decision of who to put into what spot next, and interesting childish politics and jokes came of it, it was like a clubhouse of entertainment sometimes where instead of having to pay for the fun you made really good money, but you had to know what you were doing in exchange.) So it ended up being the elderly taking the hazard pay jobs and protecting the breeding age young kids from it, and because they were old, they had a hard time climbing up into the toxic confined space vessels, through a tiny manhole, and sawing off foot thick caked on rubber from the pot walls with a sawzall, lying on a raincoat in the organic cyanide chemical sludge (just as a note, organic cyanides are nowhere near as toxic and regular inorganic ones, but they do have a carcinogen or mutagen effect, it's like almost anything in the world does, including fruit or spice flavor extracts, things like peach seeds do contain cyanides, it's a matter of dose and exposure), cutting off foot size cubes of stinky rubber, doing it for 2 hrs then taking a 2 hr sleep break to recuperate, then doing it again for 2, until the plant manager came in one night and woke them up during sleep to go back to keep working nonstop. What's right and wrong?
So when the shutdown was announced, and there was word that the corporation is gonna close the plant, and instead the union wanted to get it, and run it by themselves, an engineer whose opinion I valued highly, told me that when a corporation gives up on a plant, these self owned hillbilly places usually fail very miserably. Some of it is partly because they don't have access to the sales and supply channel, also controlled by the corrupt corporate bean counter gang, especially when all small customers, of which there were hundreds of when I started there, 2 years later were all bought up by one massive entity, which, of course, would never buy rubber from a union owned plant, while small customers, of family owned businesses that previously used to purchase, would probably have kept buying. It's like as soon as I started working there, the decision was made to fuck the plant up, by the bean counter gang, buy up all its customers by giving them an outrageously good deal. This company came after me at my next job too, bought the next company I worked at, so to speak, and got rid of me from there too. It's like where can I work where I don't feel the massive, billion dollar spending corporate bean counter effort of we waste all these billions just to fuck with you? Seriously, they make me feel like that, always setting traps, and when I fall into them there is this exhuberant joy. It's like set me another trap, I fall into that one too. What's the big deal. But of course there was already a process of technology transfer to Mexico in place even before I started there, and other college students doing similar work went off to more secure jobs as soon as they had the opportunity, when their job here was to do things like copy engineering drawings in the vault, and send them to Mexico, go back out into the plant to find out how some stuff is done here, and tell their boss who ran into issues in Mexico while trying to get things going, they knew there was no future or career for them here. And the first two I started with totally acted with me like some anti espionage agents, but when they found out I'm just a regular idiot, they sent regular kids to work with me. And I've been mostly a regular idiot, but it gets annoying when you constantly get fucked with and have to constantly adapt to yet another bullshit. Like made sick by force, being pushed out of a job where you to move around, to one where you have to stay put, in one spot, for 12 hrs, either sitting or standing, and you can just tell you're getting xrayed the shit out of you, because your whole body shakes and quivers, from simple sitting in one place and folding small paper boxes with your fingers. I can't find another explanation, and yeah, having to constantly use hand sanitizer does not help, but some days you can make it with only using it once or twice, because you don't have to pick up anything off the floor, nor did you touch your face, yet you still get sick as hell, and you came in healthy, and as soon as the job is over, and you start driving home, by the time you reach the highway you feel healthy again. It had to be x-rays, because I would feel better even if I'd just move around, or go to the bathroom, and then it became an issue of why I go to the bathroom outside scheduled breaks. Wtf? I'm not gonna hold my piss for another 2 hrs to the next break, what kind of bs is that? It's a we can't x-ray you properly if you constantly lose the beam and recouperate bs. But, anyway, there may be something to that statement of, if a corporation that's expert and running a business, gives up on a plant, the union workers may fail miserably on their own, because simply making a good product and knowing how to run the equipment is not the only thing required to run a successful business, it's almost the only thing, but not 100%, and if you lack that remaining expertise, such as legal defense, accounting, management, sales, IT, etc, most of these things that may seem highly superfluous, you may still fail miserably as a business. Even before the company was under constant harassment from like a legal firm that purchased an old section that has been down for decades, with old buildings on it, and they did not start a business there, they only bought it so they can dig out some old ash pit where all the fly ash from coal was dumped back in the 1940's when the whole plant ran on steam, fueled by shoveled coal, and that's where all the ash happened to be dumped to, and they'd sue the company over pollution, to where the company paid over 10x the purchase price in legal penalties and fees of what they sold that property for. It was an easy way to suck money out of the company by the bean counting lawyers, buy a piece of land from the company then keep suing the company over it. Make sure you can find at least some coal fly ash. Fucking bloodscuking scumbag lawyers. That's the only way they know how to make money. Keep suing honest hardworking people. Let alone a county government, who came to the company asking for their waste water, gave them a deal so they stop processing the waste in their own massive lagune system, then 10 years later suing them for the polluting discharge, with fees of $100,000 per month penalty for discharging sodium stearate soap. They actually had an infrared monitor looking for sodium stearate, so the beancounters from corporate headquarters from the other state, or their expert engineers, had to go for some soap that would keep a stable latex, but not show up on the detector. Sodium stearate is like the most organic, benign and least expensive soap there is in the world, and everything else is worse environmentally, but you have to use something else when the despotic idiots who wriggled their ways into the county government harass you over it, so they can collect. It was all bullshit beyond belief around the company, the money was good because a quality product was made, but everyone was fighting to get a bite out of it, including dirty tricks of legal battles over nothing, or county government idiots on a rampage wanting to make more money off of you. Of course the company shut down and went to Mexico where they did not get harassed by the local government, and there are not EPA harassments either. What else did the county think would happen? It was not really the union bullshit that put the nail into the coffin, but all this extra take a bite out of you, $1.2 million in penalties to the local government over bullshit, when your total revenue was 20 million, half going to the local and corporate beancounters and stock holders, half to the 100 union employees (coming to 100,000/yr/head with a highschool dimploma, due to massive overtime + benefits like health insurance, 401K, etc.), and the beancounters of course were not very happy with that, they thought they could make 15 million for themselves and 5 million to the union, or 50,000/yr/head, there was this constant struggle like predators in the jungle fight over a piece of bone, and the "owners," the beancounters ultimately always get their way, because they are absolute rulers of their private property, and can go to places like Mexico, all the while fucking up the US economy by doing that. That 10 million union wages all used to go into the local economy, and now it does not.
But anyway, if you watch the "Last Mohican" Hollywood movie, you get a sense of what royalty, the crown, nobility is how they act and behave, both its abuses of power, and also the organization top down structure that functions even in chaotic situations. (For instance all militaries in the world function as a top down despotism, under unified command, instead of a voting democracy of what shall we do next in the heat of battle, in the chaos of war.) The hillbilly americans against the betrayal of the crown still stand relatively little chance in that movie, because they don't have the industrial base, the knowledge to make weapons, how to direct an efficient economy, compared to the crown. And back then people knew all this, and when they wrote the US anthem in 1812, they knew exactly just how lucky they were winning that war against The Crown, but also just how dedicated they were back then to maintaining their own liberty from power abuses by The Crown, in the Land of the Free, and the home of the brave, under their new Novus Ordo Seclorum, under their Constitution. By the way the war of July 4th, 1776, the war of independence was really won for the US by the French navy, successfully blockading a British resupply of military forces, and postpone the war to 1812, otherwise there would never have been a formal capitulation by the British Crown, and the war would have dragged on and on endlessly, the Americans, under Washington's command, not winning a single battle during the entire War of Independence, though most every single battle the British Crown won was a Pyrrhic victory, and the whole thing could have economically potentially drained the British Crown during its height of power, and might have stopped by the British Crown giving up further pursuit anyway. The warfare scenario during the war of Independence was pretty much the British redcoats marching in formation through the swampy back country jungle woods of Eastern USA, for never before heard of distances (in the US distances are huge compared to Britain or much of the rest of the world), physically worn down, relatively thin and overextended on resupply chains, and the American farmers ambushing such marching formations with a few gunshots, picking off a redcoat here and there, then going back to their farms and continuing harvesting and work there, then going back, picking off a few more redcoats, who marched on endlessly seldom being able to achieve a pitched battle, instead just being put through constant harassment of sniper shoot then run by the hillbilly independence fighters, and whenever they achieved a pitched battle, they did win every single one of them. And this could have dragged on endlessly, for another 30 years war, or another 100 years war, because the stakes and wealth in question were high, just like in the prior 30 year or 100 year wars in Europe, had it not been for the French Navy blockading the resupply of the fort where the British withdrew. The French Crown did it to curtail the power of the British Crown, their arch enemy for centuries, against which they were losing ground in the constant power grubbing battles of the monarchies of Europe (and such constant battling is no longer allowed or possible in the nuclear age, but its interesting that Europe never ended up under one royal house dominating all countries, in a sort of monopoly way that a whole lot of the US recently goes into in a lot of fields, such as how long before AT&T owns every physical cell tower, and the likes of Verizon are forced to pay rent to them?), but the French Crown did it at such a desperate cost, at such grave debts, that the French Monarch, citoyen Capet, lost his head under the guillotine and stacked into a pyramid, during the economic crash and rebellion that ensued from it. He was not able to refinance his debts, unlike the British crown, so in essence the death sentence was done by not the French Revolution itself, but by the preexisting beancounting powerstructure permeating Europe denying him economic stability. Because of what he created, a non-nobility society the first time for millenia in European domain, called the United States, because nobody expected Washington not to become emperor of the US, or king of the US, and instead stick to the words they put down into the declaration of independence, that we do not recognize privilege by birth, in our view all men are created equal in the eyes of the law. Similar financial hardship issues, such as the very heavy penalties of WWI restitution payments born by Germany to Britain and France, were in large part responsible for triggering WWII by Germany, and in absence of that heavy economic drain we may have never had a WW2. The beancounters controlling money create a lot of wealth, but they often abuse their power too much. Economics, or more exactly money, can kill or create death more than anything in the world. But the point is not to go extreme on underestimating monarchies and top down control of an economy, even while being conscious of the abuses of power present in them. By far the single most prevalent and easiest way to lose any kind of fight or battle is by the overconfidence in your abilities and underestimating your opponent.
It's important to understand the intricacies and nuances of things hanging in balance, while protecting your 99.9% of the population yeoman farmer or other small private property owner liberty your forefathers so dearly fought for, against the 0.1% of the population that seeks to own and control all your private property, and through it, every aspect of your life. Which is pretty much what's happening even under democracy today, concentration of wealth and power, the economic divide between the rich and the poor getting wider, the extermination of a dominant middle class, the weak get weaker and the strong get stronger, the rich get richer exploiting the poor get poorer, and the strong who get stronger also set loose the checks and balances that used to be in place by government lawmakers, such as correctly regulated natural monopolies or city water/sewer systems, natural gas and electricity suppliers, also such simple things as a single corporation or person owning a maximum of 7 radio and tv stations in any local market, that was lifted in 1996, when Clearchannel went on a rampage with easy Wall Street stock money, and bought up everything they could, the remote Wall Street or corporate beancounters often cutting out local experts with quality programmings, to push their drab programs, and of course, control advertising pricings, political venues, in a monopolistic centralized fashion. In essence they can control who gets elected anywhere in the US by controlling all the radio stations and other media outlets like newspapers, tv channels, etc, there.
PS. By the way standards should be voluntary. Such as cell phone connectors are free to take on any shape, especially if they are a clever new way of cost saving and robustness, we're open to experimentation with good will, and we like to give liberty like that to companies, but we reserve the right to bitch about nonstandard connectors that are simply nonstandard, and overly complex and costly, for the simple sake of nonstandard compliance, for having to purchase the adaptor from the manufacturer itself that patents the design and wants to rape you in the ass over the cost of it, as opposed to being able to replace it with an off the shelf cheap standard power supply and connector. So we bitch, but we shoulhd not enforce standards compliance by manufacturers, just turn on the bitching heat and discomfort to them really high if we feel they are not acting in good faith toward the public, and are simply aiming to derive sort of unfair profit, so to speak, without any benefit whatsoever coming from nonstandard compliance. And forcing them to simply explain what these benefits are when they don't follow standards, by filling out some kind of legal form issued by the government, just simply creates overhead, more red tape, bureaucracy and inefficiency, and lawyers running off with the money in another unfair or unnecessary profit way. The best solution is massive bitching directed at them from unhappy customers who retained some kind of critical thinking ability, in simple places like online review sites. If the Consumer Protection Agency or FBI discovers such misbehavior, they could employ a bunch of undercover agents who create some kind of intense (but still moderated enough to keep the company in business) customer bitching feedback through various channels, including online review sites (while still posting honest and critical opinions about the nonstandard products), (or even contacting tech support, specifically bitching about nonstandards compliance for no apparent good reason) that regular customers busy with their everyday lives simply don't have the time or drive to do. And it gets complicated on what's a nonapparent but still present good enough reason, or if that's good enough reason at all to justify nonstandard compliance. It's like you can leave it up to regular customers too, and protect their rights to bitch, and complain, Archie Bunker style, and if they willingly tolerate and accept minor abuses, such as they seem to have liked Apple's gadgets irregardless of power supply connector shapes, because of the value they were getting out of the overall deal, then let them have it. (Btw I would never buy a new overpriced Apple gadget, but I have bought like 2GB small portable harddrives on ebay that were disassembled from old Apple music players, for like 50c or $1 each, that nobody wants because of the small 2GB size.) So the consumer protection agency should go really light on such undercover customer bitching punishment, and it should especially not become a tool to be lobbied by competitors to drive each other out of business through one competitor who did not lobby enough getting crucified, while others getting a free pass. As that is what politicians do, manage things, meddle in the affairs of the public, provide favors to their network, and fight against competing networks in the public. So in a sense you need a Consumer Protection Agency, but in the Ronald Reagen sense you don't, we already have too much government. So it should be small and efficient, and only going after blatant cases, only when necessary, and otherwise not doing anything, and not be a yet another department going to daily morning meetings, looking for something to do that day as a job, finding an unlucky business to pick on each day, even if not necessary. It's like the FBI is well suited to be the Consumer Protection Agency, and when they have nothing good to do, get reassinged to work on other FBI related issues, such as local police corruption cases and the like. You don't have to have government for the sake of government, and once you put people in a job there, dependent on that income, it's really hard for them to say, ok, we think we have nothing useful to do for today, or for a few months, and we're not gonna pick up a paycheck, unless someone can reassign us to a temporary job where we can do something useful, then come back to this one every once in a while to make sure things are still going well, and we still have nothing useful to do here.
